Cl.  MX.:.  1  Bk.%."A*  >( 
TRINITY  COLLEGE 
LIBRARY 


DURHAM,  NORTH  CAROLINA 


Rec’d  NOV. .14.1902 


$9Z66SS00a 


sauejqn  ^i!SJ0A!un  a>jnQ 


THE 

II 


MAKING  OF  ENGLAND 


BY 

JOHN  RICHARD  GREEN,  M.A.,  LL.D. 

HONORARY  FELLOW  OF  JESUS  COLLEGE,  OXFORD 
AUTHOR  OF  “HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE”  “SHORT  HISTORY  OF  THE 
ENGLISH  PEOPLE”  ETC. 


iDitl)  illaps 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
1898 


* 

> 

► 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2018  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/makingofengland01gree_0 


G  7%  A/ 


PREFACE. 


The  present  work  is  only  a  partial  realization  of 
an  old-standing  project  of  mine,  for  it  is  now  some 
ten  or  twelve  years  since  I  made  collections  for,  and 
actually  began,  a  history  of  England  up  to  the  Nor¬ 
man  Conquest.  This  work,  however,  was  interrupt¬ 
ed  by  the  preparation  of  my  Short  History ,  and  has 
since  been  further  delayed  by  my  revision  and  ex¬ 
pansion  of  that  work ;  and,  now  that  my  hands  are 
free,  the  state  of  my  health  forbids  my  carrying  out 
this  earlier  plan  in  its  full  extent.  I  have  thought 
it  better,  therefore,  to  gather  up  and  complete  what 
I  could  of  the  history  of  the  earlier  times  up  to  the 
union  of  England  under  Ecgberht ;  and  this  the 
more  because  these  years  form  a  distinct  period  in 
our  national  history  whose  interest  and  importance 
have,  I  think,  still  to  be  fully  recognized.  They  form, 
in  fact,  the  period  of  the  Making  of  England — the 
age  during  which  our  fathers  conquered  and  settled 
over  the  soil  of  Britain,  and  in  which  their  political 
and  social  life  took  the  form  which  it  still  retains. 
The  centuries  of  administrative  organization  which 

\<oW 


VI 


PREFACE. 


stretch  from  Ecgberht  to  Edward  the  First,  the  age 
of  full  national  development  which  extends  from  Ed¬ 
ward’s  day  to  our  own,  only  become  fully  intelligible 
to  us  when  we  have  fully  grasped  this  age  of  nation¬ 
al  formation.  I  cannot  but  feel,  therefore,  that  it  is 
no  slight  misfortune  that  such  a  period  should  re¬ 
main  comparatively  unknown ;  and  that  its  strug¬ 
gles,  which  were  in  reality  the  birth-throes  of  our  na¬ 
tional  life,  should  be  still  to  most  Englishmen,  as 
they  were  to  Milton,  mere  battles  of  kites  and  of 
crows.  Whether  I  have  succeeded  in  setting  these 
struggles  in  a  truer  and  a  more  interesting  light,  my 
readers  must  decide.  The  remoteness  of  the  events, 
the  comparative  paucity  of  historical  materials,  no 
doubt  make  such  an  undertaking  at  the  best  a  haz- 
ardous  one ;  and  one  of  the  wisest  of  my  friends, 
who  is,  at  the  same  time,  the  greatest  living  authority 
on  our  early  history,  warned  me  at  the  outset  against 
the  attempt  to  construct  a  living  portraiture  of  times 
which  so  many  previous  historians,  themselves  men 
of  learning  and  ability,  had  left  dead.  Perhaps  it  is 
my  own  vivid  interest  in  the  subject  which  has  en¬ 
couraged  me,  in  spite  of  such  a  warning,  to  attempt 
to  convey  its  interest  to  others.  In  doing  so,  how¬ 
ever,  I  have  largely  availed  myself  of  some  resources 
which  have  been  hitherto,  I  think,  unduly  neglected. 
Archaeological  researches  on  the  sites  of  villas  and 
towns,  or  along  the  line  of  road  or  dyke,  often  fur¬ 
nish  us  with  evidence  even  more  trustworthy  than 
that  of  written  chronicle ;  while  the  ground  itself, 


PREFACE. 


vii 

where  we  can  read  the  information  it  affords,  is, 
whether  in  the  history  of  the  Conquest  or  of  the  Set¬ 
tlement  of  Britain,  the  fullest  and  the  most  certain 
of  documents.  Physical  geography  has  still  its  part 
to  play  in  the  written  record  of  that  human  history 
to  which  it  gives  so  much  of  its  shape  and  form  ;  and 
in  the  present  work  I  have  striven,  however  imper¬ 
fectly,  to  avail  myself  of  its  aid. 

I  may  add,  in  explanation  of  the  reappearance  of 
a  few  passages,  relating  principally  to  ecclesiastical 
matters,  which  my  readers  may  have  seen  before, 
that  where  I  had  little  or  nothing  to  add  or  to 
change  I  have  preferred  to  insert  a  passage  from 
previous  work,  with  the  requisite  corrections  and 
references,  to  the  affectation  of  rewriting  such  a  pas¬ 
sage  for  the  mere  -sake  of  giving  it  an  air  of  novelty. 


John  Richard  Green. 


CONTENTS, 


INTRODUCTION. 

BRITAIN  AND  ITS  FOES. 

A.D.  PAGE 

Britain  Fortunate  in  the  Moment  of  its  Conquest . I,  2 

Rapidity  of  its  Organization  and  Development . 2,  3 

Shown  in  its  Roads  and  its  Towns . 3,  4 

But  this  Civilization  of  Little  Depth . 5 

Britain  indeed  little  more  than  a  Military  Colony . 6 

Its  Civilization  Hindered  by  the  Physical  Character  of  the  Country  .  7,  8 

Its  Downs . 9 

Its  Waste  and  Fen . 10 

Its  Woodlands . n 

Effect  of  this  on  the  Provincials . 12 

Probable  Severances  between  the  Romanized  and  Un-Romanized  Pro¬ 
vincials  ............  13 

This  Heightened  by  Misgovernment  and  Disaffection  ....  14 

The  Severance  perhaps  Accounts  for  the  Success  of  the  Pictish  Inroads  14,  15 
While  Piets  Attack  by  Land,  Scots  and  Saxons  Attack  by  Sea  .  .  15 

The  Pirate-boats  of  the  Saxons . 16 

Letter  of  Sidonius  Describing  their  Piracy . 16,17 

Their  Work  mainly  Slave-hunting . 17 

Effect  of  their  Presence  in  the  Channel . 18,  19 

Creation  of  the  Saxon  Shore . 19,  20 

Fortresses  of  the  Saxon  Shore . 20 

The  Roman  Troops  Strong  Enough  to  Guard  Britain  to  the  Last  .  .  21 

Withdrawal  of  the  Roman  Troops . 21,22 

The  Province  Defends  itself  for  Thirty  Years  .  .  .  .  23, 24 

But  at  Last  Strives  to  Divide  its  Foes  by  Calling  in  Pirates  against  the 

Piets . 24, 25 

CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  SAXON  SHORE.  449-f.  500. 

449.  Three  Jutish  Keels  Land  in  Thanet . 2 1 

Their  Landing-place  at  Ebbsfleet . 28 

Their  Encampment  in  Thanet . 2c 

The  Jutes  Aid  the  Britons . 3! 


X  CONTENTS. 

A.D.  PAGE 

Quarrel  between  Jutes  and  Britons . 31 

Obstacles  in  the  Way  of  Jutish  Attack . 32 

Their  Sack  of  Durovernum . 33 

March  on  the  Medway  Valley . 33 

455.  Battle  of  Aylesford . 34 

457.  Battle  of  the  Cray  Drives  Britons  to  London . 35 

Revolution  in  Britain  under  Aurelius  Ambrosianus  ....  36 

Aurelius  Drives  Back  the  Jutes  into  Thanet . 36 

The  Fortress  oFRichborough . 36 

465.  The  Final  Overthrow  ofthe  Britons  at  Wipped’s-fleet  ....  37 

465-473.  Conquest  of  the  Rest  of  the  Caint . 37,38 

The  Jutes  Forced  to  Halt  by  Physical  Obstacles . 3S 

Descents  of  the  Saxons  on  either  Flank  of  the  Caint  ...  38,  39 

477.  Saxon  War-bands  under  Ailla  Land  at  Selsea . 40 

477-491.  The  Coast  slowly  Won  by  these  South  Sexe . 41 

491.  Siege  of  Anderida . 41 

Roman  Life  here  as  Shown  in  Villa  at  Bignor . 43 

.480-500.  Descents  of  Saxons  in  District  North  of  the  Thames  ....  44 

Fall  of  Camulodunum . 45 

Character  of  the  Settlement  of  these  East  Sexe . 45 

Barriers  which  Prevent  their  Advance  into  the  Island  ....  47 

<-.480.  Landing  of  the  Engle . 47 

Their  German  Home-land . 48 

Their  Conquest  of  East  Anglia . 49 

Settlement  of  the  North-folk  and  South-folk . 50 

Probably  Refrained  from  Attacking  Central  Britain  .  .  .  .51 

Their  Settlement  Completes  the  Conquest  of  the  Saxon  Shore  .  -  52 

CHAPTER  II. 

CONQUESTS  OF  THE  ENGLE,  c.  500-r.  570. 

The  Bulk  of  Britain  still  Guarded  by  Strong  Natural  Barriers  .  53,54 

The  Engle  Stretch  Northward  along  the  Coast . 54 

c.  500.  They  Conquer  the  District  about  Lindum . 55 

Settlement  of  the  Lindiswara . 56 

Other  Engle  Seize  Holderness . 56 

And  Establish  a  Kingdom  of  the  Deirans  in  the  Wolds  and  District 

round . 58 

Eboracum . 58, 59 

500-520.  Fall  of  Eboracum . 60 

Conquest  of  the  Plain  of  the  Ouse . 61 

Conquest  of  Eastern  and  Western  Yorkshire . 62,  63 

Flight  of  the  Britons  Shown  in  Remains  at  Settle . 64 

Attack  of  the  Engle  still  further  North . 65 

The  Roman  Wall . 66 

Little  Permanent  Change  Wrought  by  Pictish  Inroads  .  .  .  67,  68 

500-847.  Conquest  and  Settlement  of  the  Engle  in  the  Basin  of  the  Tweed  .  68,69 


CONTENTS.  xi 

A.D.  PAGE 

517.  Ida  Sets  Up  the  Kingdom  of  the  Bernicians  at  Bamborough  ...  69 

S17-c.  580.  Slow  Advance  of  these  Bernicians  from  the  Coast . 70 

The  Engle  in  the  Valley  of  the  Trent . 72 

Physical  Character  of  the  Trent  Valley . 72 

Descent  of  the  Engle  from  Lindum . 73 

The  Snottingas  Settle  on  the  Edge  of  Sherwood . 75 

The  Bulk  of  the  Engle  Follow  the  Fosse  Road  to  the  Valley  of  the  Soar  76 

550.  Fall  of  Ratae  and  Settlement  of  the  Middle  Engle . 76 

Meanwhile  the  Gyrwas  Break  in  on  the  Towns  around  the  Wash  .  .  77 

Their  Two  Tribes,  the  North  and  South  Gyrwas  .  .  .  .  7S,  79 

The  Engle  Attack  our  Northamptonshire . 79 

Its  Physical  Character  at  this  Time . 80 

Settlement  of  the  South  Engle . 80 

c.  560.  Advance  of  the  West  Engle . 81 

The  Pec-sastan  Settle  in  our  Derbyshire . 81 

The  Rest  of  the  West  Engle  in  our  Staffordshire . 82 

The  West  Engle  become  Known  as  Mercians,  or  Men  of  the  March  .  82 

CHAPTER  III. 

CONQUESTS  OF  THE  SAXONS,  c.  500-577. 

Character  of  British  Coast  to  the  Westward  of  Sussex  ....  83 

The  Estuary  of  the  Southampton  Water  Leads  up  to  Gwent  ...  84 

495-511.  Attempts  of  Saxons  Known  as  Gewissas  to  Penetrate  by  this  Estuary  .  84 

519.  Conquest  of  the  Gwent  in  Battle  of  Charford . 85 

519.  Cerdic  and  Cynric  become  Kings  of  the  West  Saxons  ....  85 

520.  Gewissas  Repulsed  by  Britons  at  Mount  Badon . 86 

530.  Conquest  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  Settlement  of  Jutes  in  it  .  .  -87 

520-552.  Long  Pause  in  West-Saxon  Advance . 87 

Physical  Barriers  that  Arrested  them . S8 

552.  Cynric  again  Advances  to  the  West . 88 

552.  Fall  of  Sorbiodunum . 89 

552-556.  Settlement  of  the  Wil-saetan . 90 

556.  Victory  of  the  West  Saxons  at  Barbury  Hill  Makes  them  Masters  of  the 

Marlborough  Downs . 91 

Conquest  of  our  Berkshire . 92 

Britain  now  Open  to  the  West  Saxons . 93 

They  are  Able  to  Advance  along  the  Upper  Thames  ....  93 

Obstacles  which  had  till  now  Prevented  the  English  Advance  from  the 

Mouth  of  the  Thames . 94 

The  Water-way  Blocked  by  the  Fortress  of  London  ....  95 

Original  Character  of  the  Ground  about  London  ....  95-97 

London  not  a  British  Town . 97 

Its  Site  the  Centre  of  a  Vast  Solitude . 98 

Its  Rapid  Growth  under  the  Romans . 99,  100 

Its  Importance  as  the  Centre  of  their  Road  System  ....  101 

Stages  of  its  Growth . 101,102 


A.D. 


Xll 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

Its  Later  Greatness . 102 

It  long  Resists  Successfully  the  East  Saxons  and  the  Jutes  of  Kent  .  103 

Advance  of  the  East  Saxons  on  our  Hertfordshire . 104 

540-560.  Fall  of  Verulamium . 105 

560-568.  Fall  of  London . 105,106 

Settlement  of  the  Middle  Saxons . 106 

Growth  of  Kent  since  its  Conquest . 107,  108 

568.  The  Fall  of  London  Sets  the  Jutes  Free  to  Advance  to  the  West  .  .  109 

Meanwhile  the  West  Saxons  are  Advancing  on  the  Same  Tract  from 

the  West . 109 

Their  Road  Open  to  them  by  the  Fall  of  Calleva  .  .  .  .  no,  ill 

Their  Advance  along  the  Thames  Valley . 112 

568.  They  Meet  and  Defeat  the  Jutes  at  Wimbledon . 1 13 

Settlement  of  the  West  Saxons  in  our  Surrey . 114 

The  District  of  the  Four  Towns . 114-116 

The  Icknield  Way  Guides  the  West  Saxons  to  it  .  .  .  .  .117 

They  Cross  the  Thames  at  Wallingford . 119 

571.  Cuthwulf’s  Victory  at  Bedford . 119 

West  Saxons  Occupy  the  District  of  the  Four  Towns  .  .  .  .120 

The  Close  of  their  Advance  to  the  North  probably  Due  to  the  Presence 

of  the  Engle  in  Mid-Britain . 121 

577.  They  Attack  the  Severn  Valley . 122 

League  of  the  Three  Towns  against  them . 123 

577.  Their  Victory  at  Deorham . 124 

Their  Settlement  as  the  Hwiccas  along  the  Lower  Severn,  on  the  Cots- 
wolds,  and  by  the  Avon . 125,  126 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  CONQUERORS. 


At  the  Battle  of  Deorham  Half  Britain  has  become  English  .  .  .  127 

Henceforth  the  Work  of  the  English  is  that  of  Settlement  rather  than 

Conquest . 127,  128 

Character  of  the  Settlement  Determined  by  that  of  the  Conquest  .  .128 

Characteristics  of  the  Conquest — 

(1)  The  Weakness  of  the  Attack . 128 

(2)  Stubbornness  of  the  Defence . 129 

(3)  Nature  of  the  Conquered  Country . 129 

Hence  the  Slowness  of  the  Conquest  and  the  Driving-off  of  the  Con¬ 
quered  People . 130 

The  Britons  not  Slaughtered,  but  Driven  Off . 13 1 

Proofs  of  this  Displacement — 

(x)  The  New  Inhabitants  Know  themselves  only  as  English¬ 
men  . 133 

(2)  The  Unconquered  Britons  Know  them  only  as  Strangers  .  133 

(3)  Evidence  of  Local  and  Personal  Names  ....  134 

(4)  Evidence  of  Language . 135 


CONTENTS. 


xiii 

PAGE 

(5)  Evidence  of  Changed  Institutions . 136 

(6)  Evidence  Drawn  from  Destruction  of  Towns  .  .  .  137 

(7)  Evidence  Drawn  from  the  Change  of  Religion  .  .  138,  139 

But  Roman  Britain  still  Influenced  the  New  England — 

(1)  It  Gave  it  its  Limits . 140 

(2)  It  Determined  the  Bounds  of  Kingdoms  and  Tribes  .  141,  142 

(3)  It  Influenced  the  Social  Settlement . 142 

But  in  all  Other  Ways  Roman  Life  Disappeared . 143 

The  Change  Shown  in  the  Conquest  of  Kent  .....  143 

(1)  The  Caint  in  Roman  Times . 144 

(2)  The  Caint  after  the  Jutish  Conquest  ....  145,  146 

The  New  English  Society  that  Sprang  up  on  this  Ruin  .  .  .  147,  148 

The  Slowness  of  the  Conquest  Allows  the  Transfer  of  the  Whole  Eng¬ 
lish  Life . 149 

The  Settlement  that  of  Numerous  Separate  Folks . 151 

Traces  of  such  Folks  in  Kent . 151 

But  Early  Fusion  of  such  Folks  in  Three  Great  Kingdoms  .  .  152,153 

And  Recognition  by  the  Three  Kingdoms  of  a  National  Unity  .  .  153 

Character  of  the  English  Civilization . 154 

(1)  The  Saxons  Long  in  Contact  with  Rome  ....  154 

(2)  Their  Early  Art . 155 

(3)  Their  Literature . 156,  157 

(4)  Their  Moral  Temper . 158,  159 

(5)  Their  Religion . 160,  161 

(6)  Its  Weak  Hold  on  the  Settlers . 162,  163 

(7)  Their  Military  Life . 164,  165 

The  Folk  itself.  Its  Shape  Drawn  from  War  ....  166,  167 

(1)  The  Host . 167 

(2)  The  Military  Organization  Shapes  the  Civil  Organization  .  169 

(3)  The  Hundred-moot  and  Folk-moot  ....  170,171 

(4)  The  King . 172 

(5)  Eorl  and  Ceorl . 173 

(6)  The  Thegn . 174 

The  English  Township . 175,  176 

(1)  Its  Boundaries . 177,  178 

(2)  The  Freeman’s  Home . 178 

(3)  The  Farm  and  its  Labor . 180,  181 

(4)  The  Bond  of  the  Kin . 182,  183 

(5)  The  Common  Holding  of  Land . 184 

(6)  The  Unfree . 185 

(7)  The  Slave . 186 

(8)  The  Tun-moot . 187,  188 

CHAPTER  V. 

THE  STRIFE  OF  THE  CONQUERORS.  577-617. 

Change  of  Relations  between  Conquerors  and  Conquered  .  .  .  189 

Early  Severance  between  the  Two  Races . 190 


XIV 


CONTENTS. 


5S3. 

591. 

584- 589. 
Before  597. 

Before  58  8. 

585- 588. 
588. 
588. 


593. 

597. 


597. 

601. 


603. 


604. 

601. 


?  607. 


on  the  Older  \ 


Shown  in  the  Story  of  Beino  .... 

This  Passes  Away  with  the  Battle  of  Deorham 
The  Britons  no  longer  Driven  from  the  Soil  . 

Their  Increasing  Numbers  as  the  Conquest  Spreads  Westward 
Change,  too,  in  Relations  of  the  Conquerors  themselves 
They  Divide  into  Greater  and  Lesser  Powers 
After-history  a  Strife  of  the  Greater  Powers  for  Supremacy 
The  West  Saxons  under  Ceawlin  the  Leading  English  Power 
Ceawlin’s  March  on  the  Upper  Severn  Valley 
Storm  of  Uriconium  .... 

Ceawlin  Defeated  at  Faddiley 
Rising  of  the  Hwiccas  Throws  Ceawlin  Back 
Ceawlin  Defeated  at  Wanborough  . 

Internal  Troubles  of  the  West  Saxons  . 

Aithelberht  of  Kent  Seizes  the  Opportunity 
His  Marriage  with  Bertha 

Canterbury . 

Aithelberht’s  Supremacy 

Its  Limits . 

War  between  Bernicians  and  Deirans 
Gregory  and  the  English  Slaves  at  Rome 

Death  of  Ailla . 

Conquest  of  Deira  by  the  Bernician  King  Aithelric 
The  Union  of  the  Two  Kingdoms  in  Northumbria  . 

The  Three  Great  Kingdoms  fairly  Established 
zEthelfrith  Succeeds  Aithelric  as  King  of  Northumbria 
Roman  Mission  to  the  English  under  Augustine  . 
zEthelberht  Receives  the  Missionaries  in  Thanet  . 

They  Settle  at  Canterbury . 

Future  Issues  of  their  Coming  .... 

Conversion  of  Aithelberht  and  his  People 
Gregory’s  Plan  for  the  Ecclesiastical  Organization  of  Britain 
Augustine’s  Interview  with  the  Welsh  Clergy 
Condition  of  the  Britons  at  this  Time 
The  Stubbornness  of  their  Resistance 
Disorganization  of  W’hat  Remained  of  Britain 
Rejection  of  Augustine  by  the  British  Clergy . 

Consolidation  of  the  British  States  . 

Its  Result  a  Revival  of  the  British  Strength  . 

Alliance  of  Northern  Britons  with  the  Scots  . 

Their  Force  Crushed  by  Aithelfrith  in  the  Battle  of  Daegsastan 
Northumbrian  Supremacy  Established  over  Northern  Britons 
zEthelberht  at  last  Resolves  to  Carry  Out  Gregory’s  Scheme 

Establishment  of  Bishop  at  Rochester . 

Bishop  Set  over  the  East  Saxons  at  London  .... 
Raedwald,  King  of  East  Anglians,  Baptized  at  ^Ethelberht’s  Court 

The  East  Anglians  Reject  Christianity . 

Fall  of  zEthelberht’s  Supremacy 


PAGE 
190,  I9I 
192 
192 
193 
‘93.  194 
195 
195 
195. 196 

198 

199 

200 

201 

202 
202 

203 
204 
205 
206 
207 
208 
210 
21 1 
21 1 
2 1 1 
212 
212 
213 
213 
214 
215 
216 

1 6,  2 1 7 
217 
2l8 
218,  219 
219,  220 
221 
222 
223 
224 
225 
225,  226 
226,  227 
.  228 
228,  229 
.  229 
•  230 
.  230 


21 


CONTENTS. 


XV 


A.D.  PAGE 

Raedwald  Establishes  a  Supremacy  over  Mid-Britain  ....  230 

This  Revolution  Aided  by  the  Troubles  of  the  West  Saxons  .  .231 

And  by  Althelfrith’s  Embarrassments  with  the  House  of  AUla  .  .  232 

The  House  of  Ailla  Finds  Shelter  among  the  Welsh,  who  are  Attacked 

by  Aithelfrith . 232 

Position  and  Importance  of  Chester  in  Roman  Times  ....  233 

613.  ./Ethelfrith’s  Victory  at  Chester . 234,235 

Results  of  this  Battle  on  the  Britons  and  on  Northumbria  .  .  .  236 

.TEthelfrith  Drawn  to  the  South  by  the  Weakness  of  Wessex  and  Fall 

of  Kent . 238 

G16.  The  East  Saxons  Revolt  from  Kent  at  Althelberht’s  Death  .  .  .  238 

AEthelfrith  Brought  into  Collision  with  Rasdwald  by  the  House  of  Allla  239 

617.  Eadwine  Seeks  Shelter  in  East  Anglia . 240 

Hesitations  of  Rsedwald . 241 

Eadwine  and  the  Stranger . 242 

617.  ^Ethelfrith  Defeated  by  Raedwald  at  the  Idle . 243,  244 


7-633. 


626. 


627. 

26-655. 

628. 

633. 

634. 
15-642. 

635. 

635. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  NORTHUMBRIAN  SUPREMACY.  617-659. 


Eadwine  Established  as  King  of  Northumbria . 245 

The  Kingdom  of  Elmet . 246,  247 

Eadwine’s  Conquest  of  Elmet . 249 

His  Power  at  Sea,  and  Conquests  of  Anglesea  and  Man  ....  250 

He  Establishes  his  Supremacy  over  Mid-Britain . 251 

His  Victory  over  the  West  Saxons . 251 

Eadwine  Supreme  over  All  the  English  save  Kent . 252 

Character  of  his  Rule  over  Northumbria . 252 

He  is  Pressed  by  his  Kentish  Wife  to  Become  Christian  .  .  .255 

The  Northumbrian  Witan  Accept  Christianity  ....  255,256 

The  New  Faith  Rejected  in  East  Anglia . 257 

Rising  of  the  Mercians . 258 

Penda  King  of  the  Mercians . 258 

Penda  Becomes  Supreme  over  Mid-Britain . 259 

His  Battle  with  the  West  Saxons  at  Cirencester  .....  259 
Probable  Annexation  of  the  Hwiccan  Country  .....  260 
Strife  between  Penda  and  Eadwine  for  East  Anglia  ....  260 

Alliance  of  Penda  with  Cadwallon . 261 

The  Hatfield  Fen . 262 

Eadwine  Defeated  and  Slain  by  Penda  at  Hatfield . 264 

Northumbria  Broken  Up  into  its  Two  Kingdoms  .....  264 

Penda  Conquers  East  Anglia . 265 

Oswald  King  of  the  Bernicians . 266 

Battle  of  the  Heaven-field . 268 

From  this  Time  the  Struggle  of  the  Welsh  is  a  Mere  Struggle  of  Self- 

Defence  . 268 

Oswald  Calls  for  Missionaries  from  Ireland  ......  269 


XVI 


CONTENTS. 


A.D.  PAGE 

Influence  of  its  Physical  Characteristics  on  the  History  of  Ireland  .  269 

Early  Ireland  a  Huge  Grazing-ground . 270 

Its  Primitive  Institutions . 271 

Its  Contrast  with  the  Rest  of  Europe . 272,  273 

Story  of  Patrick . 274 

The  Conversion  of  Ireland . 275 

The  Irish  Church  Moulded  by  the  Social  Condition  of  Ireland  .  276,  277 

Influence  of  the  Celtic  Temper  on  Irish  Christianity  ....  278 

Its  Poetic  and  Romantic  Temper . 279 

The  Foreign  Missions  of  the  Irish  Church . 280 

635.  Aidan  Summoned  by  Oswald  to  Lindisfarne . 281 

The  Irish  Missionaries  in  Northumbria . 281,  282 

Oswald  Re-establishes  the  Northumbrian  Supremacy  .  .  .  283,  284 

642.  Oswald  Slain  by  Penda  at  the  Maserfeld . 286 

Northumbria  again  Broken  Up . 287 

642-670.  Oswiu  King  of  the  Bernicians . 287 

Penda  Ravages  Bernicia . 287 

65  4.  Oswiu  Reconquers  Deira . 288 

Final  Restoration  of  Northumbria . 289 

652.  Conversion  of  Penda’s  Son  Peada . 290 

Conversion  of  the  East  Saxons . 291 

654.  Penda  Reconquers  East  Anglia . 292 

Penda  Attacks  Oswiu . 293 

655.  Penda  Defeated  and  Slain  at  the  Winwaed . 293 

Wreck  of  the  Mercian  State . 294,  295 

Oswiu  Supreme  over  all  the  English . 296 

659.  Revolt  of  the  Mercians  under  Wulfhere . 296-298 

Abandonment  by  Northumbria  of  her  Effort  after  Supremacy  .  298,299 

(Note  011  the  Impcrium  of  the  Early  Kings]  ....  298-300 

CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  KINGDOMS.  659-690. 

With  the  Failure  of  Northumbria  National  Union  Seems  Impossible  .  301 
Entry  of  a  New  Element  into  English  Life  in  the  Church  .  .  .  301 

All  the  English  States  save  Sussex  now  Christian . 302 

The  Organizing  Force  of  Roman  Christianity . 302 

But  the  Dominant  Christianity  in  Britain  now  Irish  ....  303 

Activity  of  the  Irish  Church  in  the  North  after  the  Winwaed  .  .  .  304 

654-676.  The  Mission  Work  of  Cuthbert . 304-308 

The  Irish  Church  Devoid  of  Organizing  Power . 308 

The  Success  would  have  Brought  About  a  Religious  Schism  in 

Britain . 30S,  309 

The  Roman  Party  in  Northumbria . 310 

Benedict  Biscop  its  Head . 312 

Still  more  Energetic  Action  of  Wilfrid . 312 

664.  The  Irish  Party  Defeated  at  the  Synod  of  Whitby . 313 


A.D. 


669. 

59-675. 

661. 

69-672. 


673. 


690. 

50-652. 


673. 

75-678. 

75-704. 


709. 


678. 

70-685. 

70-675. 


675. 


CONTENTS. 


XVI 1 


315: 


3^ 


323> 

326, 

328, 


narcations 


The  Synod  Averted  the  Religious  Isolation,  and  Secured  the  Rel 

Oneness  of  England . 

Importance  of  the  1’rimacy  in  the  Reunited  Church 
Theodore,  Named  Primate  by  the  Pope,  Lands  in  Britain 
Mercia  now  the  Most  Active  English  State 
Wulf  here  King  of  the  Mercians  .... 

Re-establishes  the  Mercian  Supremacy  in  Mid-Britain 
Extends  it  over  Essex,  Surrey,  and  Sussex 
Theodore  Journeys  over  All  England 
He  is  Everywhere  Received  as  Primate  . 

His  First  Ordering  of  the  English  Dioceses  . 

Calls  a  Council  at  Hertford . 

Influence  of  these  Councils  on  National  Development 
Establishes  a  School  at  Canterbury 
Influence  of  this  School  on  English  Literature 

Ealdhelm  in  Wessex . 

Conquest  of  the  Forest  of  Braden  by  the  West  Saxons 
Maidulf  Sets  Up  his  “  Burh  ”  of  Malmesbury  . 

Ealdhelm’s  Work  in  this  Forest  Tract  . 

Theodore’s  Second  Organization  of  the  Dioceses  . 

The  English  Dioceses  Coextensive  with  the  Kingdoms 
Theodore  Subdivides  them  by  Falling  Back  on  the  Tribal  De 
He  Divides  the  See  of  East  Anglia. 

His  Division  of  the  Mercian  See  .... 

Mercia  Under  King  zEthelred  .  .... 

The  Monastic  Movement  of  this  Time  Based  on — 

(1)  A  Passion  for  Solitude 

(2)  Social  Impulse  which  Followed  it 
The  Monasteries  Rather  Social  and  Industrial  Centres  than  Religi 
Effect  of  this  Impulse  in  Reclaiming  the  Country  . 

The  Forest  of  Arden . 

The  Foundation  of  Evesham . 

The  Fens  of  the  Wash . 

Guthlac  at  Croyland  ....... 

The  Thames  Valley . 

The  Nuns  of  Barking  ....... 

Survey  of  the  Rest  of  Mid-Britain . 

Theodore  Invited  to  Organize  the  Church  in  Northumbria 
Ecgfrith,  King  of  the  Northumbrians  .... 

His  Conquest  of  Northern  Lancashire  and  the  Lake  District 
Carlisle  and  its  Continuous  Life  .... 

Ecgfrith’s  Triumphs  over  the  Piets  .... 

Ecgfrith  Defeats  Wulfhere  and  Recovers  Lindsey  . 

Condition  of  Northumbria 
Monastic  Colonies  along  the  Coast. 

Ebba’s  House  at  Coldingham  ..... 

Relations  of  these  Monastic  Colonies  to  the  Realm,  and  its  Defence 
They  Bring  Labor  again  into  Honor . 354, 

B 


338, 


341, 


346, 


314 

316 

317 

318 

318 

319 

3>9 

321 

321 

322 

323 

324 

325 

326 

327 

329 

330 

330 

331 

332 

333 

333 
33  3 

334 

335 
335 

335 

336 

339 

340 
342 
342 

344 

345 
347 
347 
347 

347 

348 

349 

350 

350 

351 

352 

353 
355 


CONTENTS. 


A.D. 


678. 


679. 

682. 

684. 

6S5. 


685. 

690 


XV111 

Influence  of  the  Movement  on  Poetry 
Hilda’s  House  at  Streonashalh 

Story  of  Caedmon . 

Character  of  Caedmon’s  Toem  . 

Influence  of  the  Monastic  Movement  on  Art 
Greatness  of  Bishop  Wilfrid 
Theodore  Divides  the  Northumbrian  Dioceses 
Wilfrid  Appeals  to  Rome  and  is  Exiled  from  Northumbria 
He  Takes  Refuge  among  and  Converts  the  South  Saxons 
War  between  Mercia  and  Northumbria  .... 

Ecgfrith  Forced  to  Cede  Lindsey . 

Theodore  Creates  Two  Fresh  Bishoprics  in  the  North  . 

Attack  of  the  Northumbrian  Fleet  on  the  Shores  of  Ireland 

Rising  of  the  Piets  against  Ecgfrith . 

Cuthbert’s  W’ords  of  Ill-omen . 

Ecgfrith  and  his  Army  Slain  by  the  Piets  at  Nectansmere 
Wilfrid  Submits  to  Theodore  and  is  Restored  to  York  . 

Theodore  Dies . 

Later  Completion  of  the  Work  of  Organization  by  the  Development  of 
a  Parochial  System,  by  the  Endowment  of  the  Clergy,  and  by  the 
Provision  of  Discipline  within  the  Church  .  .  .  369,370 


PAGE 

•  356 

356,357 

•  353 
358,  359 
361,  362 

363 

363 

364 

364 

366 
366 
366 

366 

367 
367 

365 
36S 
369 


6S2. 

685. 


6S8. 

3SS-726. 

6S8-694. 

710. 


715. 


726. 

71S-757. 

72S-733. 

733-754. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


THE  THREE  KINGDOMS.  690-S30. 


Silent  Influence  of  Theodore’s  Work  in  Promoting  National  Unity 
The  Political  Disunion  Seems  Greater  than  Ever  .... 
Weakness  and  Anarchy  of  the  West  Saxons  since  Faddiley  . 

But  their  Real  Strength  not  Diminished . 

King  Centwine  Drives  the  Britons  to  the  Quantocks 
Ceadwalla  Unites  All  the  West  Saxons  Under  his  Rule  . 

Conquers  Sussex  and  the  Isle  of  Wight . 

Fails  in  an  Attack  on  Kent  and  Withdraws  to  Rome 

Ine  Reunites  the  West  Saxons  after  an  Interval  of  Anarchy  . 

Forces  Kent,  Essex,  and  London  to  Own  his  Supremacy 

Attacks  the  Kingdom  of  Dyvnaint . 

Founds  Taunton  in  the  Conquered  Territory . 

Somerset  after  its  Conquest . 

Mingling  of  the  Two  Races  seen  at  Glastonbury  .  .  .  . 

Seen  too  in  the  Double  City  of  Exeter . 

Ine  Divides  the  Bishopric  of  W’essex  ...... 

He  Repulses  the  Mercian  King  Ceolred  at  Wanborough 

Fresh  Outbreak  of  Anarchy  in  Wessex . 

Ine  Dies  on  Pilgrimage  to  Rome . 

zEthelbald  King  of  Mercia . 

Aithelbald  Overruns  all  Wessex . 

His  Supremacy  Owned  by  all  the  Southern  English 


•  37i 

■  371 
37B372 

•  372 

•  373 

•  374 

•  374 

•  374 

•  375 

•  375 

•  376 

•  377 

•  378 

■  379 

•  379 
.  3S0 

•  3S1 

.  381 

•  3S2 

•  383 

•  3S4 

•  3S4 


CONTENTS.  xix 

A.D.  PAGE 

754.  The  West  Saxons  Rise  and  Defeat  .^Ethelbald  at  Burford  .  .  .  384 

Meanwhile  Northumbria  Stands  Apart  from  the  Rest  of  Britain  .  .  385 

685-705.  Aldfrith  King  of  Northumbria  ........  385 

Peaceful  Growth  of  Learning  under  his  Rule . 385 

673-735.  This  Learning  Summed  Up  in  Bteda . 3S6 

His  Life  at  Jarrow . 387 

His  Learning  and  Works . 38S 

His  Ecclesiastical  History . 389,390 

The  Story  of  his  Death . 391 

His  Scheme  of  Religious  Reformation  in  the  North  ....  392 

735.  Ecgberht  becomes  Archbishop  of  York . 392 

738-758.  His  Brother  Eadberht  King  of  the  Northumbrians . 392 

740.  Eadberht  Repulses  both  the  Mercians  and  the  Piets  ....  393 

750.  Takes  Kyle  from  the  Britons  of  Strathclyde . 392 

York  under  Eadberht . 394 

The  School  of  York  under  Ecgberht . 395 

756.  Eadberht  Defeated  by  the  Piets . 396 

758.  Eadberht  and  Ecgberht  both  Withdraw  to  a  Monastery  .  .  .  .  396 

The  After-history  of  Northumbria  one  of  Weakness  and  Anarchy  .  .  397 

Change  in  the  Character  of  our  History  .......  397 

England  becomes  Linked  to  the  Rest  of  Western  Christendom  .  .  397 

The  Change  Brought  About  by  the  Joint  Work  of  English  Missionaries 

and  the  Franks . 39S 

Growth  of  the  Frankish  Kingdom  . . 399 

The  Franks  under  Pippin  Support  the  English  Missionaries  .  .  .  399 

690.  Mission  of  Willibrord . 400,401 

718-753.  Mission  Work  of  Boniface . 401,402 

Conversion  of  Germany  by  the  English  Missionaries  ....  403 

Its  Results  on  the  History  of  the  Papacy  and  the  Empire  .  .  .  403 

It  Draws  the  Frankish  Power  into  Connection  with  the  English  king¬ 
doms  . 405 

Britain  now  Definitely  Parted  into  Three  Kingdoms  ....  405 

Losses  of  Mercia  after  the  Battle  of  Burford . 406 

758-796.  Offa  King  of  Mercia  ..........  406 

773.  Offa  Recovers  Kent,  Essex,  and  London . 406 

777.  Drives  the  West  Saxons  from  the  District  of  the  Four  Towns  .  .  406 

779.  Drives  the  Welsh  from  Shropshire . 4Q7 

75  4-786.  The  West  Saxons  Conquer  Devon . 408 

787.  Ecgberht,  Driven  out  of  Wessex,  Takes  Refuge  at  the  Frankish  Court  .  409 

787.  Offa  Creates  the  Archbishopric  of  Lichfield . 409 

Effect  of  this  had  it  Lasted . 410 

Policy  of  the  Franks  towards  the  English  Kingdoms  .  .  .  .411 

Friendly  Relations  of  Charles  the  Great  and  Offa . 412 

Offa,  however,  on  his  Guard  against  Charles  ......  413 

English  Exiles  at  the  Frankish  Court . 414 

794.  Offa  Seizes  East  Anglia . 416 

803.  His  Successor  Cenwulf  Suppresses  the  Mercian  Archbishopric  .  416 

802.  Ecgberht  becomes  King  of  Wessex . 41S 


A.  D 


XX 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

808.  The  Northumbrian  King  Eardwulf  Restored  by  Pope  and  Emperor  .  419 

815-825.  Ecgberht’s  Conquest  of  Cornwall . 420 

Close  of  the  Struggle  with  the  Britons . 420 

825.  Beornwulf  of  Mercia  Attacks  Ecgberht . 422 

His  Defeat  at  Ellandun . 422 

Ecgberht  Seizes  Kent  and  Essex . 422 

825-827.  East  Anglia  Rises  and  Defeats  the  Mercians . 422 

829.  Ecgberht  Conquers  Mercia . 422,423 

829.  Northumbria  Submits  to  Ecgberht . 423 

All  Englishmen  in  Britain  United  under  one  Ruler  ....  424 


LIST  OF  MAPS. 


PAGE 

I.  The  English  Kingdoms  in  600 . to  face  26 

II.  Roman  Kent . 30 

III.  Eastern  Britain . 39 

IV.  Eastern  Britain . 46 

V.  Mid-Britain . 57 

VI.  Northern  Britain . 67 

VII.  Mid-Britain . 71 

VIII.  Central  Britain . 74 

IX.  Eastern  Britain . 7S 

X.  Southern  Britain .  ...  85 

XI.  Early  London . 96 

XII.  Southern  Britain . no 

XIII.  Eastern  Britain . 120 

XIV.  Western  Britain . 122 

XV.  Britain  in  5S0 . 197 

XVI.  Southern  Britain . 203 

XVII.  Britain  in  593 . 209 

XVIII.  Britain  in  616 . 237 

XIX.  Britain  in  626 . 253 

XX.  Britain  in  634 . 267 

XXI.  Britain  in  640 . 285 

XXII.  Britain  in  658 . 297 

XXIII.  Britain  in  665 . 321 

XXIV.  Southwestern  Britain . 328 

XXV.  Mid-Britain  from  700  to  Soo . 337 

XXVI.  Southwestern  Britain . 377 

XXVII.  Britain  in  750 . 383 

XXVIII.  Britain  in  792 . 417 

XXIX.  Southwestern  Britain . 421 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTRODUCTION. 

BRITAIN  AND  ITS  FOES. 

The  island  of  Britain  was  the  latest  of  Rome’s  introd. 
conquests  in  the  West.  Though  it  had  been  twice  The 
attacked  by  Julius  Caesar,  his  withdrawal  and  the  conquest. 
inaction  of  the  earlier  emperors  promised  it  a  con¬ 
tinued  freedom ;  but,  a  hundred  years  after  Cassar’s 
landing,  Claudius  undertook  its  conquest,  and  so 
swiftly  was  the  work  carried  out  by  his  generals  and 
those  of  his  successor  that  before  thirty  years  were 
over  the  bulk  of  the  country  had  passed  beneath 
the  Roman  sway.1  The  island  was  thus  fortunate 
in  the  moment  of  its  conquest.  It  was  spared  the 


1  In  these  few  introductory  pages,  I  need  scarcely  say  that  I  do 
not  attempt  to  write  a  history  of  Roman  Britain.  Such  a  history, 
indeed,  can  hardly  be  attempted  with  any  profit  till  the  scattered 
records  of  researches  among  the  roads,  villas,  tombs,  etc.,  of  this 
period  have  been  in  some  way  brought  together  and  made  acces¬ 
sible.  What  I  attempt  is  simply  to  note  those  special  features  of 
the  Roman  rule  which  have  left  their  impress  on  our  after- his¬ 
tory. 


I 


2 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


introd.  pillage  and  exactions  which  ruined  the  provinces  of 
Britain  Rome  under  the  Republic,  while  it  felt  little  of  the 
3FoestS  evils  which  still  clung  to  their  administration  under 
the  earlier  Empire.  The  age  in  which  its  organiza¬ 
tion  was  actively  carried  out  was  the  age  of  the  An- 
tonines,  when  the  provinces  became  objects  of  spe¬ 
cial  care  on  the  part  of  the  central  government,1  and 
when  the  effects  of  its  administration  were  aided  by 
peace  without  and  a  profound  tranquillity  within. 
The  absence  of  all  record  of  the  change  indicates 
the  quietness  and  ease  with  which  Britain  was  trans¬ 
formed  into  a  Roman  province.  A  census  and  a 
land-survey  must  have  formed  here,  as  elsewhere, 
indispensable  preliminaries  for  the  exaction  of  the 
poll-tax  and  the  land-tax,  which  were  the  main  bur¬ 
dens  of  Rome’s  fiscal  system.  Within  the  province 
the  population  would,  in  accordance  with  her  inva¬ 
riable  policy,  be  disarmed ;  while  a  force  of  three 
legions  was  stationed,  partly  in  the  north  to  guard 
against  the  unconquered  Britons,  and  partly  in  the 
west  to  watch  over  the  tribes  which  still  remained 
half  subdued.  Though  the  towns  were  left  in  some 
measure  to  their  own  self-government,  the  bulk  of 
the  island  seems  to  have  been  ruled  by  military  and 
financial  administrators,  whose  powers  were  practi¬ 
cally  unlimited.  But,  rough  as  their  rule  may  have 
been,  it  secured  peace  and  good  order;  and  peace 
and  good  order  were  all  that  was  needed  to  ensure 

1  Capitolinus  says  of  Antoninus  Pius,  “With  such  diligence  did 
he  rule  the  subject  peoples  that  he  cared  for  all  men  and  all  things 
as  his  own.  All  the  provinces  flourished  under  him.”  Hadrian’s 
solicitude  was  shown  by  his  ceaseless  wanderings  over  the  whole 
Empire,  and  by  the  general  system  of  border  fortifications  of  which 
his  wall  in  Britain  formed  a  part. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


3 


material  development.  This  development  soon  made 
itself  felt.  Commerce  sprang  up  in  the  ports  of  Brit¬ 
ain.  Its  harvests  became  so  abundant  that  it  was 
able  at  need  to  supply  the  necessities  of  Gaul.  Tin 
mines  were  worked  in  Cornwall,  lead  mines  in  Som¬ 
erset  and  Northumberland,  and  iron  mines  in  the 
forest  of  Dean.  The  villas  and  homesteads  which, 
as  the  spade  of  our  archaeologists  proves,  lay  scat¬ 
tered  over  the  whole  face  of  the  country  show  the 
general  prosperity  of  the  island. 

The  extension  of  its  road  system,  and  the  up¬ 
growth  of  its  towns,  tell,  above  all,  how  rapidly  Brit¬ 
ain  was  incorporated  into  the  general  body  of  the 
Empire.  The  beacon-fire  which  blazed  on  the  cliffs 
of  Dover  to  guide  the  vessels  from  the  Gaulish 
shores  to  the  port  of  Richborough  proclaimed  the 
union  of  Britain  with  the  mainland ;  while  the  route 
which  crossed  the  downs  of  Kent  from  Richborough 
to  the  Thames  linked  the  roads  that  radiated  from 
London  over  the  surface  of  the  island  with  the  gen¬ 
eral  net-work  of  communications  along  which  flow¬ 
ed  the  social  and  political  life  of  the  Roman  world. 
When  the  Emperor  Hadrian  traversed  these  roads 
at  the  opening  of  the  second  century,  a  crowd  of 
towns  had  already  risen  along  their  course.1  In  the 
southeast  Durovernum,  the  later  Canterbury,  con- 


1  The  bulk  of  these  towns  undoubtedly  occupied  British  sites, 
and  were  probably  only  modifications  of  communities  which  had 
already  taken  a  municipal  shape  in  the  interval  of  rapid  native  de¬ 
velopment  between  the  landing  of  Ctesar  and  the  landing  of  Clau¬ 
dius.  But  these,  after  all,  can  have  been  little  more  than  collec¬ 
tions  of  huts,  like  the  Gaulish  communities  which  had  risen  under 
like  circumstances ;  and  the  difference  between  such  a  community 
and  the  meanest  Roman  town  was  even  materially  immense. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


Roman 

towns. 


4 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


nected  Richborough  with  London.  In  the  south¬ 
west  Venta,  or  Winchester,  formed  the  centre  of  the 
Gwent,  or  open  downs  of  our  Hampshire ;  while  goutv 
provincials  found  their  way  to  the  hot  springs  of 
Bath,  and  Exeter  looked  out  from  its  rise  over  the 
Exe  on  the  wild  moorlands  of  the  Cornish  peninsula. 
Colchester  and  Norwich  stand  on  the  sites  of  Ro¬ 
man  cities  which  gathered  to  them  the  new  life  of 
the  eastern  coast ;  and  Lindum  has  left  its  name  to 
the  Lincolnshire  which  was  formed  in  later  days 
around  its  ruins.  Names  as  familiar  meet  us  if  we 
turn  to  central  Britain.  The  uplands  of  the  Cots- 
wolds  were  already  crowned  with  the  predecessor 
of  our  Cirencester,  as  those  of  Hertfordshire  were 
crowned  by  that  of  our  St.  Albans ;  while  Leicester 
represents  as  early  a  centre  of  municipal  life  in  the 
basin  of  the  Trent.  Even  on  the  skirts  of  the  prov¬ 
ince  life  and  industry  sheltered  themselves  under  the 
Roman  arms.  A  chain  of  lesser  places  studded  the 
road  from  York  to  the  savage  regions  of  the  north, 
where  the  eagles  of  a  legion  protected  the  settlers 
who  were  spreading  to  the  Forth  and  the  Clyde. 
Caerleon  sprang  from  the  quarters  of  another  legion 
which  held  down  the  stubborn  freedom  that  linger¬ 
ed  among  the  mountains  of  Wales,  and  guarded  the 
towns  which  were  rising  at  Gloucester  and  Wroxeter 
in  the  valley  of  the  Severn ;  while  Chester  owes  its 
existence  to  the  station  of  a  third  on  the  Dee,  whose 
work  was  to  bridle  the  tribes  of  North  Wales  and 
of  Cumbria.1 

1  It  is  in  the  age  of  the  Antonines  that  we  first  get  a  detailed 
knowledge  of  Britain  in  the  geographical  survey  of  Ptolemy,  which 
gives  us  the  towns  of  the  native  tribes  (Monum.  Hist.  Brit.,  pp. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


5 


It  is  easy,  however,  to  exaggerate  the  civilization  1NTR0D- 
of  Britain.  Even  within  the  province  south  of  the  Britain 
Firths  the  evidence  of  inscriptions* 1  shows  that  large  ‘Foes' 
tracts  of  country  lay  practically  outside  the  Roman  ln^.fect 
life.  Though  no  district  was  richer  or  more  peo ^civilization 
pled  than  the  southwest,  our  Devonshire  and  our 
Cornwall  seem  to  have  remained  almost  wholly  Cel¬ 
tic.  Wales  was  never  really  Romanized;  its  tribes 
were  held  in  check  by  the  legionaries  at  Chester  and 
Caerleon,  but  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  third 
century  they  called  for  repression  from  the  Emperor 
Severus  as  much  as  the  Piets.2  The  valleys  of  the 
Thames  and  of  the  Severn  were  fairly  inhabited, 
but  there  are  fewer  proofs  of  Roman  settlement  in 
the  valley  of  the  Trent;  and  though  the  southern 
part  of  Yorkshire  was  rich  and  populous,  Northern 
Britain,  as  a  whole,  was  little  touched  by  the  new  civ¬ 
ilization.  And  even  in  the  south  this  civilization 
can  have  had  but  little  depth  or  vitality.  Large  and 
important  as  were  some  of  its  towns,  hardly  any 
inscriptions  have  been  found  to  tell  of  the  presence 
of  a  vigorous  municipal  life.  Unlike  its  neighbor 
Gaul,  Britain  contributed  nothing  to  the  intellectual 
riches  of  the  Empire ;  and  not  one  of  the  poets  or 
rhetoricians  of  the  time  is  of  British  origin.  Even 

x.-xvi.) ;  and  in  the  account  of  its  roads  and  towns  given  in  the 
Antonine  Itinerary  (ibid,  xx.-xxii.).  A  few  milestones  survive,  and 
the  names  of  Hadrian  and  Antoninus  Pius,  which  they  bear,  fix  the 
general  date  of  this  road-making. 

1  See  Hiibner,  Inscriptiones  Britanniae  Latin®  (forming  the  sev¬ 
enth  volume  of  the  Corpus  Inscriptionum  Latinarum,  published  at 
Berlin,  1873),  a  book  which  must  furnish  the  groundwork  of  any 
history  of  Roman  Britain. 

s  There  are  few  inscriptions  of  Roman  date  from  Devon  and 
Cornwall ;  none  from  Wales. 


6 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


Its  life 
mainly 
military. 


moral  movements  found  little  foothold  in  the  island. 
When  Christianity  became  the  religion  of  the  Em¬ 
pire  under  the  house  of  Constantine,  Britain  must 
have  become  nominally  Christian  ;  and  the  presence 
of  British  bishops  at  ecclesiastical  councils  is  enough 
to  prove  that  its  Christianity  was  organized  in  the 
ordinary  form.1  But  as  yet  no  Christian  inscription 
or  ornament  has  been  found  in  any  remains  of  ear¬ 
lier  date  than  the  close  of  the  Roman  rule ;  and  the 
undoubted  existence  of  churches  at  places  such  as 
Canterbury,  or  London,  or  St.  Albans,  only  gives 
greater  weight  to  the  fact  that  no  trace  of  such 
buildings  has  been  found  in  the  sites  of  other  cities 
which  have  been  laid  open  by  archaeological  re¬ 
search. 

Far,  indeed,  as  was  Britain  from  the  centre  of  the 
Empire,  had  the  Roman  energy  wielded  its  full  force 
in  the  island  it  would  have  Romanized  Britain  as 
completely  as  it  Romanized  the  bulk  of  Gaul.  But 
there  was  little  in  the  province  to  urge  Rome  to  such 
an  effort.  It  was  not  only  the  most  distant  of  all  her 
Western  provinces,  but  it  had  little  natural  wealth, 
and  it  was  vexed  by  a  ceaseless  border  warfare  with 
the  unconquered  Britons,  the  Piets,  or  Caledonians, 
beyond  the  northern  firths.  There  was  little  in  its 
material  resources  to  tempt  men  to  that  immigration 
from  the  older  provinces  of  the  Empire  which  was 
the  main  agent  in  civilizing  a  new  conquest.  On 


1  Stubbs  and  Haddan  (Councils  of  Great  Britain,  i.  1-40)  have 
collected  the  few  facts  which  form  the  meagre  evidence  for  the  ex¬ 
istence  of  Christianity  in  Britain.  Even  of  this  meagre  list,  some 
are  doubted  by  so  competent  an  observer  as  Mr.  Raine  (Historians 
of  the  Church  of  York,  Introd.  p.  xx.  note). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


7 


the  contrary,  the  harshness  of  a  climate  that  knew  introd. 
neither  olive  nor  vine  deterred  men  of  the  south  Britain 
from  such  a  settlement.  The  care  with  which  every  aFoes!3 
villa  is  furnished  with  its  elaborate  system  of  hot-air 
flues  shows  that  the  climate  of  Britain  was  as  intol¬ 
erable  to  the  Roman  provincial  as  that  of  India,  in 
spite  of  punkas  and  verandas,  is  to  the  English  ci¬ 
vilian  or  the  English  planter.  The  result  was  that 
the  province  remained  a  mere  military  department 
of  the  Empire.  The  importance  of  its  towns  was 
determined  by  military  considerations.  In  the  ear¬ 
liest  age  of  the  occupation,  when  the  conquerors 
aimed  at  a  hold  on  the  districts  near  to  Gaul,  Col-\ 
Chester,  Verulam,  and  London  were  the  greatest  of/ 
British  towns.  As  the  tide  of  war  rolled  away  to 
the  north  and  west,  Chester  and  Caerleon  rivalled 
their  greatness,  and  York  became  the  capital  of  the 
province.  It  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  bulk  of 
the  monuments  which  have  been  found  in  Britain  re¬ 
late  to  military  life.  Its  inscriptions  and  tombs  are 
mostly  those  of  soldiers.  Its  mightiest  work  was  the 
great  wall  and  line  of  legionary  stations  which  guard¬ 
ed  the  province  from  the  Piets.  Its  only  historic 
records  are  records  of  border  forays  against  the  bar¬ 
barians.  If  we  strive  to  realize  its  character  from 
the  few  facts  that  we  possess,  we  are  forced  to  look  • 
on  Britain  as  a  Roman  Algeria. 

It  was  not  merely  its  distance  from  the  seat  of 

J  .  aspect  of 

rule  or  the  later  date  of  its  conquest  that  hindered  Britain. 
the  province  from  passing  completely  into  the  gen¬ 
eral  body  of  the  Empire.  Its  physical  and  its  social 
circumstances  offered  yet  greater  obstacles  to  any 
effectual  civilization.  Marvellous  as  was  the  rapid 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

transformation  of  Britain  in  the  hands  of  its  con¬ 
querors,  and  greatly  as  its  outer  aspect  came  to  dif¬ 
fer  from  that  of  the  island  in  which  Claudius  landed, 
it  was  far  from  being  in  this  respect  the  land  of  later 
days.  In  spite  of  its  roads,  its  towns,  and  its  mining- 
works,  it  remained,  even  at  the  close  of  the  Roman 
rule,  an  “  isle  of  blowing  woodland,”  a  wild  and  half- 
reclaimed  country,  the  bulk  of  whose  surface  was  oc¬ 
cupied  by  forest  and  waste.  The  rich  and  lower 
soil  of  the  river  valleys,  indeed,  which  is  now  the  fa¬ 
vorite  home  of  agriculture,  had  in  the  earliest  times 
been  densely  covered  with  primeval  scrub ;  and  the 
only  open  spaces  were  those  whose  nature  fitted 
them  less  for  the  growth  of  trees — the  chalk  downs 
and  oolitic  uplands  that  stretched  in  long  lines 
across  the  face  of  Britain  from  the  Channel  to  the 
Northern  Sea.  In  the  earliest  traces  of  our  histo¬ 
ry,  these  districts  became  the  seats  of  a  population 
and  a  tillage  which  have  long  fled  from  them,  as  the 
gradual  clearing-away  of  the  woodland  drew  men  to 
the  richer  soil.  Such  a  transfer  of  population  seems 
faintly  to  have  begun  even  before  the  coming  of  the 
Romans;  and  the  roads  which  they  drove  through  the 
heart  of  the  country,  the  waste  caused  by  their  mines, 
the  ever-widening  circle  of  cultivation  round  their 
towns,  must  have  quickened  this  social  change.  But 
even  after  four  hundred  years  of  their  occupation  the 
change  was  far  from  having  been  completely  brought 
about.  It  is  mainly  in  the  natural  clearings  of  the 
uplands  that  the  population  concentrated  itself  at 
the  close  of  the  Roman  rule,  and  it  is  over  these  dis¬ 
tricts  that  the  ruins  of  the  villas  or  country-houses 
of  the  Roman  landowners  are  most  thickly  scattered. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


9 


Such  spaces  were  found,  above  all,  at  the  extremi¬ 
ties  of  the  great  chalk  ranges  which  give  form  and 
character  to  the  scenery  of  Southern  Britain.  Half¬ 
way  along  our  southern  coast,  the  huge  block  of  up¬ 
land  which  we  know  as  Salisbury  Plain  and  the  Marl¬ 
borough  Downs  rises  in  gentle  undulations  from  the 
alluvial  flat  of  the  New  Forest  to  the  lines  of  escarp¬ 
ment  which  overlook  the  vale  of  Pewsey  and  the 
upper  basin  of  the  Thames.  From  the  eastern  side 
of  this  upland  three  ranges  of  heights  run  athwart 
Southern  Britain  to  the  northeast  and  the  east,  the 
first  passing  from  the  Wiltshire  Downs  by  the  Chil- 
terns  to  the  uplands  of  East  Anglia,  while  the  second 
and  third  diverge  to  form  the  north  downs  of  Surrey 
or  the  south  downs  of  Sussex.  At  the  extremities 
of  these  lines  of  heights  the  upland  broadens  out  into 
spaces  which  were  seized  on  from  the  earliest  times 
for  human  settlement.  The  downs  of  our  Hamp¬ 
shire  formed  a  “gwent,”  or  open  clearing,  whose 
name  still  lingers  in  its  “  Gwentceaster,”  or  Winches¬ 
ter  ;  while  the  upland  which  became  the  later  home 
of  the  North-folk  and  South-folk  formed  another  and  a 
broader  “  gwent  ”  which  gave  its  name  to  the  Gwenta 
of  the  Iceni,  the  predecessor  of  our  Norwich.  The 
north  downs,  as  they  neared  the  sea,  widened  out,  in 
their  turn,  into  a  third  upland  that  still  preserves  its 
name  of  the  Caint  or  Kent,  and  whose  broad  front 
ran  from  the  cliffs  of  Thanet  to  those  of  Dover  and 
Folkestone.  Free  spaces  of  the  same  character  were 
found  on  the  Cotswolds  or  on  the  wolds  of  Lincoln 
and  York;  and  in  all  we  find  traces  of  early  culture 
and  of  the  presence  of  a  population  which  has  passed 
away  as  tillage  was  drawn  to  richer  soils. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 

The 

downs. 


IO 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 

The  waste 
and  fen. 


The  transfer  of  culture  and  population,  indeed, 
had  begun  before  the  conquest  of  Claudius ; 1  and 
the  position  of  many  Roman  towns  shows  how  busily 
it  was  carried  on  through  the  centuries  of  Roman 
rule.  But  even  at  the  close  of  this  rule  the  clear¬ 
ings  along  the  river  valleys  were  still  mere  strips  of 
culture  which  threaded  their  way  through  a  mighty 
waste.  To  realize  the  Britain  of  the  Roman  age,  we 
must  set  before  us  the  Poland  or  Northern  Russia  of 
our  own ;  a  country  into  whose  tracts  of  forest  land 
man  is  still  hewing  his  way,  and  where  the  clearings 
round  town  or  village  hardly  break  the  reaches  of 
silent  moorlands  or  as  silent  fens.  The  wolf  roamed 
over  the  long  “  desert  ”  that  stretched  from  the 
Cheviots  to  the  Peak.  Beavers  built  in  the  streams 
of  marshy  hollows  such  as  that  which  reached  from 
Beverley  to  Ravenspur.2  The  wild  bull  wandered 
through  forest  after  forest  from  Ettrick  to  Hamp¬ 
stead.3  Though  the  Roman  engineers  won  fields 
from  Romney  Marsh  on  the  Kentish  coast,  nothing 
broke  the  solitude  of  the  peat-bogs  which  stretched 
up  the  Parrett  into  the  heart  of  Somersetshire,  of  the 
swamp  which  struck  into  the  heart  of  the  island 
along  the  lower  Trent,  or  of  the  mightier  fen  along 
the  eastern  coast,  the  Wash,  which  then  ran  inland 
up  the  Witham  all  but  to  Lincoln,  and  up  the  Nen 
and  the  Cam  as  far  as  Huntingdon  and  Cambridge.4 


1  Raine,  Historians  of  the  Church  of  York,  Introd.  pp.  ix.  x. 

2  Boyd  Dawkins,  Cave-hunting,  pp.  76,  132. 

3  Even  in  the  twelfth  century  the  forest  district  north  of  London 
was  full  of  wild  boars  and  wild  oxen,  “  latebrae  .  .  .  aprorum  et  tau- 
rorum  sylvestrium.”  FitzStephen’s  “  Life  of  Becket,”  in  Giles,  St. 
Thom.  Cant.  i.  173. 

4  Pearson,  Historical  Maps  of  England,  p.  3. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


1 1 

But  neither  moor  nor  fen  covered  so  vast  a  space  introd. 
of  Britain  as  its  woods.1 * * *  The  wedge  of  forest  and  Britain 
scrub  that  filled  the  hollow  between  the  north  and  aFoes!S 
south  downs  stretched  in  an  unbroken  mass  for  a 
hundred  and  twenty  miles,  from  Hampshire  to  the  woodland. 
valley  of  the  Medway ;  but,  huge  as  it  was,  this  “  An- 
dredsweald  ”  was  hardly  greater  than  other  of  the 
woodlands  which  covered  Britain.  A  line  of  thick¬ 
ets  along  the  shore  of  the  Southampton  Water  link¬ 
ed  it  with  as  large  a  forest  tract  to  the  west,  a  frag¬ 
ment  of  which  survives  in  our  New  Forest,  but  which 
then  bent  away  through  the  present  Dorsetshire  and 
spread  northward  round  the  western  edge  of  the 
Wiltshire  Downs  to  the  valley  of  the  Frome.  The 
line  of  the  Severn  was  blocked  above  Worcester  by 
the  forest  of  Wyre,  which  extended  northward  to 
Cheshire ;  while  the  Avon  skirted  the  border  of  a 
mighty  woodland,  of  which  Shakspere’s  Arden  be¬ 
came  the  dwindled  representative,  and  which  all  but 
covered  the  area  of  the  present  Warwickshire.  Away 
to  the  east  the  rises  of  Highgate  and  Hampstead 
formed  the  southern  edge  of  a  forest  tract  that 
stretched  without  a  break  to  the  Wash,  and  thus  al¬ 
most  touched  the  belt  of  woodland  which  ran  athwart 
Mid-Britain  in  the  forests  of  Rockingham  and  Charn- 
wood,  and  in  the  Brunewald  of  the  Lincoln  heights. 

The  northern  part  of  the  province  was  yet  wilder  and 
more  inaccessible  than  the  part  to  the  south;  for 
while  Sherwood  and  Need  wood  filled  the  space  be- 


1  See  Guest,  Early  English  Settlements  in  Britain  (Salisbury  vol¬ 

ume  of  Proceedings  of  Archaeological  Institute),  pp.  31,  32.  I  shall 

deal  more  at  large  with  these  swamps  and  woodlands  as  we  meet 

them  in  our  story. 


12 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


Divisions 

among 

provin¬ 

cials. 


tween  the  Peak  and  the  Trent,  the  Vale  of  York 
was  pressed  between  the  moorlands  of  Pickering  and 
the  waste  or  “  desert  ”  that  stretched  from  the  Peak 
of  Derbyshire  to  the  Roman  wall ;  and  beyond  the 
wall  to  the  Forth  the  country  was  little  more  than 
a  vast  wilderness  of  moorland  and  woodland  which 
later  times  knew  as  the  forest  of  Selkirk. 

As  we  follow  its  invaders  step  by  step  across  Brit¬ 
ain,  we  shall  see  how  wide  these  forests  were,  and 
what  hindrances  they  threw  in  the  way  of  its  assail¬ 
ants.  But  they  must  have  thrown  almost  as  great 
hindrances  in  the  way  of  its  civilization.  The  cities 
of  the  province,  indeed,  were  thoroughly  Romanized. 
Within  the  walls  of  towns  such  as  Lincoln  or  York, 
towns  governed  by  their  own  municipal  officers, 
guarded  by  massive  walls,  and  linked  together  by  the 
net-work  of  roads  which  reached  from  one  end  of  the 
island  to  the  other,  law,  language,  political  and  so¬ 
cial  life,  all  were  of  Rome.  But  if  the  towns  were 
thoroughly  Romanized,  it  seems  doubtful,  from  the 
few  facts  that  remain  to  us,  whether  Roman  civiliza¬ 
tion  had  made  much  impression  on  the  bulk  of  the 
provincials,  or  whether  the  serf- like  husbandmen 
whose  cabins  clustered  round  the  luxurious  villas  of 
the  provincial  landowners,  or  the  yet  more  servile 
miners  of  Northumbria  and  the  forest  of  Dean, 
were  touched  by  the  arts  and  knowledge  of  their 
masters.  The  use  of  the  Roman  language  may  be 
roughly  taken  as  marking  the  progress  of  the  Roman 
civilization ;  and  though  Latin  had  all  but  wholly 
superseded  the  languages  of  the  conquered  peoples 
in  Spain  and  Gaul,  its  use  was  probably  limited  in 
Britain  to  the  townsfolk  and  to  the  wealthier  pro- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


13 


prietors  without  the  towns.  Over  large  tracts  of  introd. 
country  the  rural  Britons  seemed  to  have  remained  Britain 
apart  from  their  conquerors,  not  only  speaking  their  a£oegts 
own  language,  and  owning  some  traditional  allegi¬ 
ance  to  their  native  chiefs,  but  retaining  their  native 
system  of  law.  Imperial  edicts  had  long  since  ex¬ 
tended  Roman  citizenship  to  every  dweller  within 
the  Empire ;  but  the  wilder  provincials  may  have 
been  suffered  to  retain,  in  some  measure,  their  own 
usages,  as  the  Zulu  or  the  Maori  is  suffered  to  re¬ 
tain  them,  though  subject  in  theory  to  British  law, 
and  entitled  to  the  full  privileges  of  British  subjects. 

The  Welsh  laws  which  we  possess  in  a  later  shape 
are  undoubtedly,  in  the  main,  the  same  system  of 
early  customs  which  Rome  found  existing  among 
the  Britons  in  the  days  of  Claudius  and  Caesar;1  and 
the  fact  that  they  remained  a  living  law  when  her 
legions  withdrew  proves  their  continuance  through¬ 
out  the  four  hundred  years  of  her  rule,  as  it  proves 
the  practical  isolation  from  Roman  life  and  Roman 
civilization  of  the  native  communities  which  pre¬ 
served  them. 

The  dangers  that  sprang  from  such  a  severance  inroads  oj 
between  the  two  elements  of  its  population  must 
have  been  stirred  into  active  life  by  the  danger  which 
threatened  Britain  from  the  north.  No  Roman  ruler 
had  succeeded  in  reducing  the  districts  beyond  the 
firths  ;  and  the  Britons  who  had  been  sheltered  from 
the  Roman  sword  by  the  fastnesses  of  the  Highlands 
were  strong  enough  from  the  opening  of  the  second 
century  to  turn  fiercely  on  their  opponents.  The 


Sir  H.  Maine,  Early  History  of  Institutions,  p.  6. 


14 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


wall  which  the  Emperor  Hadrian  drew  across  the 
moors  from  Newcastle  to  Carlisle  marks  the  first 
stage  in  a  struggle  with  these  Caledonians  or  Piets 
which  lasted  to  the  close  of  the  Roman  rule.  But 
even  without  such  a  barrier  the  disciplined  soldiers 
of  the  Empire  could  easily  have  held  at  bay  enemies 
such  as  these:  and  when  we  find  the  Piets  pene¬ 
trating  in  the  midst  of  the  fourth  century  into  the 
heart  of  Britain,  it  can  hardly  have  been  without  the 
aid  of  disaffection  within  the  province  itself.  For 
such  disaffection  the  same  causes  must  have  existed 
in  Britain  as  we  know  to  have  existed  in  Gaul.  The 
purely  despotic  system  of  the  Roman  government 
crushed  all  local  vigor  by  crushing  local  indepen¬ 
dence  :  and  here,  as  elsewhere,  population  was,  no 
doubt,  declining  as  the  area  of  slave-culture  widened 
with  the  sinking  of  the  laborer  into  a  serf.  If  the 
mines  were  worked  by  forced  labor,  they  would  have 
been  a  source  of  endless  oppression  ;  while  town  and 
country  alike  were  drained  by  heavy  taxation,  and  in¬ 
dustry  fettered  by  laws  that  turned  every  trade  into  an 
hereditary  caste.  But  the  disaffection  which  backed 
the  Pictish  invader  found  a  firmer  groundwork  in 
Britain  than  in  other  imperial  districts  which  suffer¬ 
ed  from  the  same  misrule.  Once  within  the  prov¬ 
ince,  the  Piets  would  meet  kindred  of  their  own,  who, 
though  conquered,  were  hardly  more  Romanized  than 
themselves,  and  whom  a  jealousy  of  the  Romanized 
townsfolk  might  easily  rouse  to  arms.  That  such  a 
division  between  its  inhabitants  broke  the  strength 
of  Britain  at  a  later  time  is  nearly  certain ;  that  it 
had  begun  in  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  is 
probable  from  the  character  of  the  Pictish  inroad 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


15 


which  all  but  tore  Britain  from  the  Empire  in  the 
reign  of  Valentinian.  The  inroad  was  met  by  his 
general,  Theodosius,  and  the  Piets  driven  back  to 
their  mountains;  but  Theodosius  had  found  South¬ 
ern  Britain  itself  in  possession  of  the  invaders.1 * 
Raids  so  extensive  as  this  could  hardly  have  been 
effected  without  aid  from  within  ;  and  the  social  con¬ 
dition  of  the  island  was  such  that  help  from  within 
may  have  been  largely  given. 

The  Piets,  however,  were  far  from  being  the  only 
enemies  who  were  drawn  at  this  moment  to  the  plun¬ 
der  of  the  province.  While  their  clans  surged  against 
the  Roman  wall,  the  coasts  of  Britain  were  being  har¬ 
ried  by  marauders  from  the  sea.  The  boats  of  Irish 
pirates — or,  as  they  were  then  called,  Scots — ravaged 
its  western  shores,  while  a  yet  more  formidable  race 
of  freebooters  pillaged  from  Portsmouth  to  the  Wash. 
In  their  homeland  between  the  Elbe  and  the  Ems, 
as  well  as  in  a  wide  tract  across  the  Ems  to  the 
Rhine,  a  number  of  German  tribes  had  drawn  to¬ 
gether  into  the  people  of  the  Saxons,  and  it  was  to 
this  people  that  the  pirates  of  the  Channel  belonged.3 
Chance  has  preserved  for  us  in  a  Sleswick  peat-bog 
one  of  the  war  keels  of  these  early  seamen.  The 
boat  is  flat-bottomed,  seventy  feet  long,  and  eight  or 
nine  feet  wide,  its  sides  of  oak  boards  fastened  with 
bark  ropes  and  iron  bolts.  Fifty  oars  drove  it  over 
the  waves  with  a  freight  of  warriors  whose  arms — 
axes,  swords,  lances,  and  knives — were  found  heaped 

1  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  lib.  xxvii.  cc.  8,  9  (Monum.  Hist.  Brit, 

p.  lxxiii.). 

3  Their  first  recorded  appearance  off  the  coast  of  Gaul  is  in  A.D. 
287.  Eutropius,  ix.  21  (Monum.  Hist,  Brit.  p.  lxxii.). 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


The 

Saxons. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


Their 

piracy. 


:6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

together  in  its  hold.1  Like  the  galleys  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  such  boats  could  only  creep  cautiously  along 
from  harbor  to  harbor  in  rough  weather;  but  in 
smooth  water  their  swiftness  fitted  them  admirably 
for  the  piracy  by  which  the  men  of  these  tribes  were 
already  making  themselves  dreaded.  Its  flat  bottom 
enabled  them  to  beach  the  vessel  on  any  fitting  coast ; 
and  a  step  on  shore  at  once  transformed  the  boatmen 
into  a  war  band. 

A  letter  which  a  Roman  provincial,  Sidonius  Apol- 
linaris,  wrote  in  warning  to  a  friend  who  had  em¬ 
barked  as  an  officer  in  the  Channel  fleet,  which  was 
“  looking  out  for  the  pirate-boats  of  the  Saxons,” 
gives  us  a  glimpse  of  these  freebooters  as  they  ap¬ 
peared  to  the  civilized  world  of  the  fifth  century. 
“When2  you  see  their  rowers,”  says  Sidonius,  “  you 
may  make  up  your  mind  that  every  one  of  them  is  an 
arch-pirate,  with  such  wonderful  unanimity  do  all  of 
them  at  once  command,  obey,  teach,  and  learn  their 
business  of  brigandage.  This  is  why  I  have  to  warn 
you  to  be  more  than  ever  on  your  guard  in  this  war¬ 
fare.  Your  foe  is  of  all  foes  the  fiercest.3  He  at¬ 
tacks  unexpectedly  ;  if  you  expect  him,  he  makes  his 
escape ;  he  despises  those  who  seek  to  block  his 
path ;  he  overthrows  those  who  are  off  their  guard ; 
he  cuts  off  any  enemy  whom  he  follows ;  while,  for 
himself,  he  never  fails  to  escape  when  he  is  forced  to 
fly.  And,  more  than  this,  to  these  men  a  shipwreck 
is  a  school  of  seamanship  rather  than  a  matter  of 


1  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  pp.  8,  9. 

1  Sidon.  Apollin.  Epist.  viii.  6  (Migne,  Patrologia,  vol.  lviii.  col. 
597)- 

3  “  Hostis  est  omni  hoste  truculentior.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


l7 


dread.  They  know  the  dangers  of  the  deep  like  men 
who  are  every  day  in  contact  with  them.  For  since 
a  storm  throws  those  whom  they  wish  to  attack  off 
their  guard,  while  it  hinders  their  own  coming  onset 
from  being  seen  from  afar,  they  gladly  risk  them¬ 
selves  in  the  midst  of  wrecks  and  sea-beaten  rocks 
in  the  hope  of  making  profit  out  of  the  very  tem¬ 
pest.”  1 2 

The  picture  is  one  of  men  who  were  not  merely 
greedy  freebooters,  but  finished  seamen,  and  who 
had  learned,  “  barbarians  ”  as  they  were,  how  to  com¬ 
mand  and  how  to  obey  in  their  school  of  war.  But 
it  was  not  the  daring  or  the  pillage  of  the  Saxons 
that  spread  terror  along  the  Channel  so  much  as 
their  cruelty.  It  was  by  this  that  the  Roman  pro¬ 
vincials  distinguished  them"  from  the  rest  of  the 
German  races  who  were  attacking  the  Empire ;  for 
while  men  noted  in  the  Frank  his  want  of  faith,  in 
the  Alan  his  greed,  in  the  Hun  his  shamelessness, 
in  the  Gepid  an  utter  absence  of  any  trace  of  civil¬ 
ization,  what  they  noted  in  the  Saxon  was  his  savage 
cruelty.  It  was  this  ruthlessness  that  made  their 
descents  on  the  coast  of  the  Channel  so  terrible  to 
the  provincials.  The  main  aim  of  these  pirate  raids, 
as  of  the  pirate  raids  from  the  north,  hundreds  of 
years  later,  was  man-hunting — the  carrying-off  of 


1  Cf.  Sidon.  Apollin.  Carm.  vii.  (Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  p.  c.) : 

“  Quin  et  Aremoricus  piratam  Saxona  tractus 
Sperabat,  cui  pelle  salum  sulcare  Britannum 
Ludus,  et  assuto  glaucum  mare  findere  lembo.” 

2  Salvian,  De  Gubernatione  Dei,  iv.  14:  “Gens  Saxonum  fera  est, 
Francorum  infidelis,  Gepidarum  inhumana,  Chunorum  impudica,” 
etc. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


Their 

slave¬ 

hunting. 


2 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


Saxons 
in  the 
Channel. 


^  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

men,  women,  and  children  into  slavery.  But  the 
slave-hunting  of  the  Saxons  had  features  of  peculiar 
horror.  “  Before  they  raise  anchor  and  set  sail  from 
the  hostile  continent  for  their  own  homeland,  their 
wont  when  they  are  on  the  eve  of  returning  is  to 
slay  by  long  and  painful  tortures  one  man  in  every 
ten  of  those  they  have  taken,  in  compliance  with  a 
religious  use  which  is  even  more  lamentable  than 
superstitious ;  and  for  this  purpose  to  gather  the 
whole  crowd  of  doomed  men  together,  and  temper  the 
injustice  of  their  fate  by  the  mock  justice  of  casting 
lots  for  the  victims.  Though  such  a  rite  is  not  so 
much  a  sacrifice  that  cleanses  as  a  sacrilege  that  de¬ 
files  them,  the  doers  of  this  deed  of  blood  deem  it  a 
part  of  their  religion  rather  to  torture  their  captives 
than  to  take  ransom  for  them.”1 2 

From  the  close  of  the  third  century  the  raids  of 
these  Saxons  had  been  felt  along  the  coasts  of  Gaul, 
and  a  fleet  which  appears  from  this  time  in  the 
Channel  must  have  been  manned  to  resist  them.  It 
is  not,  however,  till  the  year  364 1  that  we  hear  of 


1  “  Mos  est  remeaturis  decimum  quemque  captorum  {caprorum 
Migne)  per  aequales  et  cruciarias  poenas,  plus  ob  hoc  tristi  quam 
superstitioso  ritu,  necare  ;  superque  collectam  turbam  periturorum, 
mortis  iniquitatem  sortis  aequitate  dispergcre.  Talibus  eligunt  vo- 
tis,  victimis  solvunt ;  et  per  hujusmodi  non  tarn  sacrificia  purgati 
quam  sacrilegia  polluti,  religiosum  putant  caedis  infaustae  perpetra- 
tores  de  capite  captivo  magis  exigere  tormenta  quam  pretia.” 

1  have  ventured  to  base  my  version  of  this  letter  on  r.  spirited 
though  free  translation  given  by  Mr.  Hodgkin,  in  Italy  and  her  In¬ 
vaders,  vol.  ii.  p.  365.  The  “cruciarias  poenas,” which  Mr.  Hodgkin 
renders  “crucifixion,”  are  more  probably  something  like  the  “  spread- 
eagle  ”  of  the  later  Northmen. 

2  “  Cum  (Carausius)  per  tractum  Belgicae  et  Armoricae  pacandum 
mare  accepisset  quod  Franci  et  Saxones  infestabant.”  Eutrop. 
(Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  p.  lxxii.) ;  Ammianus  Marcellinus,  lib.  xxvi.  c.  4. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


19 


them  as  joining  in  any  attack  upon  Britain  itself ; 
but  from  this  moment  their  ravages  seem  to  have 
been  ceaselessly  carried  on,  and  their  presence  off 
its  shores  became  one  among  the  pressing  difficulties 
which  the  country  had  to  meet.  For  the  road  be¬ 
tween  Britain  and  Rome  lay  across  the  Channel ; 
and  the  occupation  of  the  waters  or  coasts  of  the 
Channel  by  a  pirate  fleet  was  not  only  fatal  to  the 
trade  of  the  province  with  the  European  mainland, 
but  threatened  its  connection  with  the  central  gov¬ 
ernment,  and  cut  it  off  from  the  body  of  the  Empire. 
It  is  to  the  years,  therefore,  that  followed  this  joint 
attack  of  Saxon  and  Piet  that  we  must  look  for  the 
date  of  two  measures  which  mark  what  we  may  term 
a  change  of  front  in  the  military  administration  of 
Britain.  It  was  probably  now  that  her  greater  towns 
strengthened  themselves  with  walls — a  change  which 
implied  dread  of  an  attack  from  which  the  Roman 
troops  might  be  unable  to  defend  them ;  while  the 
pressure  of  the  Saxons,  as  well  as  the  district  on 
which  it  told,  is  marked  by  the  organization  of  the 
coast  from  the  Wash  to  Southampton  Water  under 
an  officer  who  bore  the  title  of  “  Count  of  the  Mari¬ 
time  Tract,”  or  “of  the  Saxon  Shore.”* 1 


“  Hoc  tempore  .  .  .  Picti  Saxonesque  et  Scoti  et  Attacotti  Britannos 
serumnis  vexavere  continuis  ”  (Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  p.  lxxiii.). 

1  In  the  full  description  of  his  office  and  troops  (“  Notitia  utri- 
usque  Imperii,”  Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  p.  xxiv.)  the  style  of  this  officer 
is  “  Comes  Limitis  Saxonici  per  Britanniam.”  Elsewhere  (ibid.  p. 
xxiii.)  he  is  informally  “Comes  Littoris  Saxonici  per  Britannias.” 
The  arguments  of  Lappenberg  (Anglo-Saxon  Kings,  ed.  1881,  i.  57, 
58),  Kemble  (Saxons  in  England,  i.  10,  11,  14),  and  others  for  an 
earlier  date  for  this  shore,  as  well  as  for  the  derivation  of  the  name 
from  a  Saxon  settlement  along  it  rather  than  its  use  as  a  barrier 
against  Saxon  descents,  though  still  maintained  by  Mr.  Skene  (Cel- 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


20 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTR0D. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 

The  Saxon 
shore. 


It  was  here  that  Britain  lay  most  open  to  the 
pirates’  forays.  Unguarded  by  the  cliffs  and  bleak 
moorlands  that  ran  northward  along  the  coast  from 
the  Humber  to  the  Tweed,  or  by  forests  such  as 
lined  the  shore  from  Portsmouth  to  the  west,  the 
tract  which  was  known  as  the  Saxon  Shore  present¬ 
ed  along  its  whole  line  natural  features  that  invited 
and  favored  attack.  Its  sea-brim  was  fringed  with 
marshy  islands  or  low  tracts  of  alluvial  soil  which 
offered  secure  points  of  landing  or  anchorage,  and 
broken  by  large  estuaries  whose  waters  gave  access 
to  the  country  behind  them  ;  while  from  these  lower 
parts  the  land  rose  within  into  downs  and  uplands 
which  were  at  once  easy  to  overrun  and  favorable 
for  settlement.  But  the  measures  of  defence  which 
were  now  taken  more  than  compensated  for  the  nat¬ 
ural  weakness  of  the  island  in  this  quarter.  The 
coast  was  lined  with  strong  fortresses.* 1  At  Bran- 
caster  in  Norfolk  the  northernmost  of  these  watched 
the  inlet  of  the  Wash  and  guarded  the  East-Anglian 
Downs.  In  our  Suffolk  a  stronghold  now  known  as 
Burgh  Castle  blocked  the  estuary  of  the  Yare,  as  the 
walls  of  Colchester  barred  the  inlet  of  the  Stour. 
Othona,  a  fortress  at  the  mouth  of  the  Blackwater, 


tic  Scotland,  vol.  i.  p.  151),  have  been  satisfactorily  refuted  by  Dr. 
Guest  (E.  E.  Sett.  p.  33  et  seg.),  whose  judgment  is  adopted  by  Mr. 
Freeman  (Norm.  Conq.  i.  1 1,  note'),  and  by  Professor  Stubbs  (Constit. 
Hist.  i.  67,  note).  The  Notitia  Imperii,  in  which  alone  the  term  is 
found,  was  drawn  up  about  a.d.  400 ;  possibly  in  403.  (Hodgson 
Hinde,  Hist,  of  Northumberland,  i.  pt.  1,  pp.  18,  19.) 

1  The  list  is  given  in  the  Notitia  Imperii  (Monum.  Hist.  Brit, 
p.  xxiv.),  with  the  disposition  of  the  troops  in  each  fortress.  Lon¬ 
don  and  the  towns  at  Canterbury  and  Rochester,  though  backing 
this  line  of  defence,  were  not  subject  to  the  Count  of  the  Saxon 
Shore. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


2  I 

protected  the  southern  flats  of  our  Essex ;  while  INTR0D- 
London  forbade  all  passage  up  the  Thames.  Kent  Britain 
was  the  most  vital  point  of  all,  for  through  it  passed  aFoests 
the  line  of  communication  between  Britain  and 
Rome;  and  a  group  of  fortresses,  admirably  dis¬ 
posed,  protected  this  passage.  One  guarded  Rich- 
borough,  which  was  the  common  port  for  all  traffic 
from  Gaul ;  a  second  at  Reculver  held  the  entrance 
of  the  sea-channel  which  then  parted  Thanet  from 
the  mainland,  and  through  which  vessels  passed  to 
London  by  the  estuary  of  the  Thames  ;  while  walled 
towns  on  the  site  of  our  Canterbury  and  of  our  Roch¬ 
ester  protected  the  points  at  which  the  road  from 
Richborough  to  London  passed  the  Stour  and  the 
Medway.1  Three  other  fortresses  held  the  coast  of 
the  Channel  as  far  as  the  great  woods  which  hin¬ 
dered  all  landing  to  the  west.  Lymne  guarded  the 
lowlands  of  Kent  and  the  reclaimed  tracts  of  Romney 
Marsh ;  Anderida,  the  modern  Pevensey,  held  our 
Sussex ;  while  Porchester  marks  the  site  of  a  castle 
which  looked  over  the  Southampton  Water  and 
blocked  the  road  to  the  downs. 

Garrisoned  as  they  were  by  a  force  of  at  least  ten  Withdraw ■ 
thousand  men,  the  legion  placed  at  the  command  of  mans  from 
the  Count  of  the  Saxon  Shore,  these  fortresses  were  Bntain- 
too  strong  a  barrier  for  the  pirates  to  break  ;  and  we 
may  set  aside  the  theories  which,  in  ignorance  of  the 
military  strength  of  the  Empire  and  of  its  hold  over 
the  provinces,  suppose  them  to  have  conquered  and 
settled  here  for  centuries  before  the  close  of  the  Ro- 

1  The  Notitia  stations  troops  at  Dover ;  but  it  is  doubtful  wheth¬ 
er  there  was  any  Roman  fortress  there.  Clark,  “  Dover  Castle,” 

Archseol.  Journ.  vol.  xxxii.  p.  440. 


22 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


man  rule.  Up  to  the  moment,  indeed,  when  the  Im¬ 
perial  troops  quitted  Britain,  we  sec  them  able  easily 
to  repel  the  attacks  of  its  barbarous  assailants.  When 
a  renewal  of  their  inroads  left  Britain  weak  and  ex¬ 
hausted  at  the  accession  of  the  Emperor  Honorius, 
the  Roman  general  Stilicho  renewed  the  triumphs 
which  Theodosius  had  won.'  The  Piet  was  driven 
back  afresh,  the  Saxon  boats  chased  by  his  galleys 
as  far  as  the  Orkneys,  and  the  Saxon  Shore  prob¬ 
ably  strengthened  with  fresh  fortresses.  But  the 
campaign  of  Stilicho  was  the  last  triumph  of  the 
Empire  in  its  W estern  waters.  The  struggle  Rome 
had  waged  so  long  drew,  in  fact,  to  its  end.  At  the 
opening  of  the  fifth  century  her  resistance  suddenly 
broke  down ;  and  the  savage  mass  of  barbarism  with 
which  she  had  battled  broke  in  upon  the  Empire  at 
a  time  when  its  force  was  sapped  by  internal  decay. 
In  its  western  dominions,  where  the  German  peoples 
were  its  foes,  the  triumph  of  its  enemies  was  com¬ 
plete.  The  Franks  conquered  and  colonized  Gaul. 
The  West  Goths  conquered  and  colonized  Spain. 
The  Vandals  founded  a  kingdom  in  Africa.  The 
Burgundians  encamped  in  the  border-land  between 
Italy  and  the  Rhone.  The  East  Goths  ruled  at  last 
in  Italy  itself.  And  now  that  the  fated  hour  was 
come,  the  Saxons  too  closed  upon  their  prey.  The 
condition  of  the  province  invited  their  attack,  for  the 
strength  of  the  Empire,  broken  everywhere  by  mili¬ 
tary  revolts,  was  nowhere  more  broken  than  in  Brit- 

1  Claudian,  De  Tert.  Consul.  Honorii,  ap.  Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  p.  xcviii. 

“  Maduerunt  Saxone  fuso 

Orcades ;  incaluit  Pictorum  sanguine  Thule ; 

Scotorum  cumulos  flevit  glacialis  Ierne.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


23 


ain,  where  the  two  legions  which  remained  quartered  INTR0D- 
at  Richborough  and  York  set  up  more  than  once  Britain 
their  chiefs  as  emperors,  and  followed  them  across  a£oest8 
the  Channel  in  a  march  upon  Rome.  The  last  of 
these  pretenders,  Constantine,  crossed  over  to  Gaul 
in  407  with  the  bulk  of  the  soldiers  quartered  in 
Britain,  and  the  province  seems  to  have  been  left  to 
its  own  defence ;  for  it  was  no  longer  the  legionaries, 
but  “  the  people  of  Britain,”  who,  “  taking  up  arms,” 
repulsed  a  new  onset  of  the  barbarians.  As  the 
Empire  was  organized,  such  a  rising  in  arms  was  a 
defiance  of  its  laws  and  a  practical  overthrow  of  the 
whole  system  of  government ;  and  it  was  naturally 
followed  by  the  expulsion  of  Constantine’s  officials 
and  the  creation  of  a  civil  administration  on  the 
part  of  the  provincials.  Independent,  however,  as 
they  found  themselves,  they  had  no  wish  to  break 
away  from  Rome.  Their  rising  had  been  against  a 
usurper:  and  they  appealed  to  Honorius  to  accept 
their  obedience  and  replace  the  troops.  But  the 
legions  of  the  Empire  were  needed  to  guard  Rome 
itself;  and  in  410  a  letter  of  the  Emperor  bade  Brit¬ 
ain  provide  for  its  own  government  and  its  own  de¬ 
fence.1 

Few  statements  are  more  false  than  those  which  The  Brit- 
picture  the  British  provincials  as  cowards,  or  their uh dtJoue 
struggle  against  the  barbarian  as  a  weak  and  un¬ 
worthy  one.  Nowhere,  in  fact,  through  the  whole 
circuit  of  the  Roman  world,  was  so  long  and  so  des¬ 
perate  a  resistance  offered  to  the  assailants  of  the 
Empire.  Unaided  as  she  was  left,  Britain  held  brave- 


Zosimus,  lib.  vi.  c.  io,  ap.  Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  p.  lxxix. 


24 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


ly  out  as  soon  as  her  first  panic  was  over;  and  for 
some  thirty  years  after  the  withdrawal  of  the  legions 
the  free  province  maintained  an  equal  struggle 
against  her  foes.1  Of  these  she  probably  counted 
the  Saxons  as  still  the  least  formidable.  The  free¬ 
booters  from  Ireland  were  not  only  scourging  her 
western  coast,  but  planting  colonies  at  points  along 
its  line.  To  the  north  of  the  Firth  of  Clyde  these 
“  Scots  ”  settled  about  this  time  in  the  peninsula  of 
Argyle.  To  the  south  of  it  they  may  have  been  the 
Gael  who  mastered  and  gave  their  name  to  Gallo¬ 
way;  and  there  are  some  indications  that  a  larger 
though  a  less  permanent  settlement  was  being  made 
in  the  present  North  Wales.  The  Piet  was  an  even 
more  pressing  danger.  If  he  made  no  settlements, 
his  raids  grew  fiercer  and  fiercer ;  and  though  once 
at  least  a  general  rising  of  despair  drove  him  back 
from  the  very  heart  of  the  country,2  as  the  fifth  cen¬ 
tury  wore  on  Britain  was  torn  with  a  civil  strife 
which  made  united  resistance  impossible.  Its  fort¬ 
unes,  indeed,  at  this  time  have  reached  us  only  in 
late  and  questionable  traditions;3  but  there  is  much 

1  Later  tradition  attributed  the  Wall  and  the  castles  of  the  Saxon 
Shore  to  this  time.  Gildas  (ed.  Stevenson),  Hist.  sec.  18. 

3  Gildas  (Hist.  c.  20)  makes  a  fruitless  appeal  to  the  Empire  pre¬ 
ceding  this  rally.  As  the  letter  is  to  “  Agitio  ter  consuli,”  and  Hitius 
was  consul  for  the  third  time  in  446,  it  cannot  have  been  earlier 
than  this  date.  (Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  43.)  For  the  political  struggles, 
see  Guest,  ibid.  49,  50. 

3  Our  only  British  informants  for  this  period,  as  for  the  conquest 
that  followed  it,  are  Gildas  (Historia  and  Epistola — really  a  single 
work;  cf.  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  i.  44)  and  Nennius  (Hist. 
Britonum).  Both  are  edited  by  Stevenson,  and  the  first  may  be 
found  in  Monum.  Hist.  Brit.  The  genuineness  of  Gildas,  which  has 
been  doubted,  may  now  be  looked  on  as  established  (see  Stubbs  and 
Haddan,  Councils  of  Britain,  i.  44).  Skene  (Celtic  Scotland,  i.  1 1 6, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


25 


to  confirm  the  main  outline  of  the  story  which  these 
traditions  preserve.  City  and  country,  Roman  part 
and  native  part,  may  well  have  risen  in  arms  against 
one  another ;  and  under  a  leader  of  native  blood  the 
latter  seem  to  have  been  successful  over  their  Ro¬ 
manized  opponents.  But  even  this  failed  to  unite 
the  province  when  the  Piet  poured  afresh  over  the 
Roman  wall,  and  the  boats  of  the  Irish  and  English 
marauders  appeared  again  off  its  coasts.  The  one 
course  which  seemed  left  was  to  imitate  the  fatal 
policy  by  which  Rome  had  invited  its  doom  while 
striving  to  avert  it — the  policy  of  matching  barbarian 
against  barbarian.1  It  was  with  this  view  that  Brit¬ 
ain  turned  to  what  seemed  the  weakest  of  her  assail¬ 
ants,  and  strove  to  find  among  the  freebooters  who 
were  harrying  her  eastern  coast  troops  whom  she 
could  use  as  mercenaries  against  the  Piet. 


note)  gives  a  critical  account  of  the  various  biographies  of  Gildas. 
He  seems  to  have  been  born  in  516,  probably  in  the  North-Welsh 
valley  of  the  Clwyd  ;  to  have  left  Britain  for  Armorica  when  thirty 
years  old,  or  in  546 ;  to  have  written  his  History  there  about  556  or 
560;  to  have  crossed  to  Ireland  between  566  and  569;  and  to  have 
died  there  in  570.  For  the  nature  and  date  of  the  compilation 
which  bears  the  name  of  Nennius,  see  Guest,  Early  English  Settle¬ 
ments,  p.  36,  and  Stevenson’s  introduction  to  his  edition  of  him.  In 
its  earliest  form,  it  is  probably  of  the  seventh  century.  Little,  how¬ 
ever,  is  to  be  gleaned  from  the  confused  rhetoric  of  Gildas ;  and  it 
is  only  here  and  there  that  we  can  use  the  earlier  facts  which  seem 
to  be  embedded  among  the  later  legends  of  Nennius. 

1  Gildas,  Hist.  cc.  22,  23. 


INTROD. 

Britain 
and  its 
Foes. 


26 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  CONQUEST  OF  THE  SAXON  SHORE. 

449-r.  500. 

Landing  In  the  year  449  or  450'  a  band  of  warriors  was 
jutes,  drawn  to  the  shores  of  Britain  by  the  usual  pledges 
of  land  and  pay.  The  warriors  were  Jutes,  men  of 


1  With  Mr.  Freeman  and  Mr.  Stubbs,  I  accept  the  argument  of 
Dr.  Guest  (Early  English  Settlements  in  South  Britain,  p.  43,  etc.) 
as  conclusive  in  favor  of  the  date  449  or  450  for  this  first  settlement 
of  the  invaders.  The  date  really  rests  on  the  authority  of  Gildas 
and  of  Bseda.  The  first  places  the  coming  of  the  strangers  after 
the  letter  in  which  the  Britons  sought  help  from  HZtius  in  his  third 
consulship,  i.  e.  in  446.  Baeda,  who  generally  follows  Gildas  in  his 
story,  fixes  it  in  the  reign  of  Marcian,  which  he  believed  to  begin 
in  449,  and  which  in  his  English  Chronicle  he  had  begun  in  452, 
but  which  really  began  in  450  and  ended  in  457.  Baeda’s  words 
(Hist.  Eccl.  lib.  i.  c.  1 5)  simply  place  the  landing  in  Marcian ’s  reign  ; 
but  they  were  generally  read  as  assigning  it  to  the  first  year  of  his 
reign,  and  hence  the  English  Chronicle,  followed  by  later  writers, 
assigned  it  to  449.  The  work  of  Nennius  gives  three  other  dates. 
One  passage,  added  in  the  ninth  century,  and  therefore  of  little 
weight,  assigns  it  to  392.  Another  places  it  in  428.  But  the  only 
important  statement  is  one  which  Mr.  Skene  attributes  to  the  work 
“as  originally  compiled  in  the  seventh  century,”  and  which  runs, 
“  Regnante  Gratiano  secundo  Equantio  Romse  Saxones  a  Guorthi- 
gerno  suscepti  sunt  anno  ( quadringentesimo ,  Stev.)  trecentesimo 
quadragesimo  septimo  post  passionem  Christi  ”  (Nennius,  ed.  Ste¬ 
venson,  c.  31).  This  would  be  374,  when  Gratian  was  consul  with 
Equitius ;  and  probably  arose  from  a  confusion  of  the  great  inroad 
of  the  Saxons  which  occupied  Theodosius  in  the  first  and  second 
years  of  Gratian’s  rule,  with  their  permanent  landing  in  Britain. 
The  arguments  for  these  earlier  dates  have  been  recently  restated 
in  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  146  et  seq. 


Harper  Brokers  H ew  York. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


27 


a  tribe  which  has  left  its  name  to  Jutland,  at  the  chap,  i. 
extremity  of  the  peninsula  that  projects  from  the  Thecon. 
shores  of  North  Germany,  but  who  were  probably  the  sail 
akin  to  the  race  that  was  fringing  the  opposite  coast  Shore- 
of  Scandinavia  and  settling  in  the  Danish  isles.  In  449-0.500. 
three  “  keels  ” — so  ran  the  legend  of  their  conquest 
— and  with  their  ealdormen,  Hengest  and  Horsa, 
at  their  head,  these  Jutes  landed  at  Ebbsfleet:  in  the 
Isle  of  Thanet. 

With  the  landing  of  Hengest  and  his  war  band 
English  history  begins.1 2  We  have  no  longer  to 


1  “  Eopwine’s  fleot,”  English  Chronicle,  a.  449.  The  older  name 
for  Thanet,  Ruim,  is  preserved  in  the  local  name  Ramsgate. 

2  The  story  of  the  English  conquest,  as  a  whole,  rests  on  the  au¬ 
thority  of  the  English  Chronicle,  as  to  the  general  composition  and 
value  of  which  I  shall  speak  more  largely  later  on.  The  annals 
from  449  to  the  end  of  the  English  conquest — with  which  we  are 
here  concerned — were  probably  embodied  in  the  Chronicle  in  the 
middle  of  the  ninth  century.  “They  represent,”  says  Mr.  Earle, 
“  the  gleanings  and  reconstruction  of  the  half-lost  early  history  of 
Wessex  at  the  time  of  the  first  compilation  in  855.  Embodying 
antiquities  of  a  high  type,  this  section  is  not  the  oldest  composition 
preserved  in  this  Chronicle.  It  is  such  history  as  could  still  be  made 
out  of  oral  traditions,  and  it  probably  represents  the  collected  in¬ 
formation  of  the  bardic  memory,  aided  by  the  runic  stones  and  the 
roll  of  kings”  (Earle,  Two  Parallel  Chronicles,  Introduction,  p.  ix.). 
Into  some  of  these  early  entries  a  mythical  element  certainly  enters 
(as  in  the  names  of  Port  and  Wightgar,  eponyms  of  Portsmouth 
and  Wightgaraburh  or  Carisbrook),  and  we  may  perhaps  detect 
traces  of  “an  artificial  chronology  in  which  eight  and  four  are  prev¬ 
alent  factors”  (Earle,  Par.  Chron.  Intr.  p.  ix. ;  see,  however,  on  this 
matter,  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.,  Salisbury  vol.  of  Archaeol.  Institute,  p.  38 
et  scq. ) ;  but  there  is  no  real  ground  for  the  general  scepticism  as  to 
the  whole  run  of  dates  and  facts  expressed  by  writers  such  as  Lap- 
penberg  (Angl.  Sax.  [1881]  i.  97  et  seq .).  See  Stubbs  (Constit.  Hist, 
i.  46)  and  Guest  (E.  E.  Sett.  pp.  38-42,  etc.),  whose  conclusions  are 
accepted  by  Mr.  Freeman  (Norm.  Conq.  i.  9,  note).  The  later  Eng¬ 
lish  accounts  of  this  period,  such  as  those  of  Asser,  Ethelward,  or 
Florence,  are  all  based  on  the  Chronicle. 


28 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  i.  watch  the  upgrowth  of  Roman  life  in  a  soil  from 
The  con-  which  Roman  life  has  been  swept  away,  or  to  ciues- 

quest  of  .  J  .  1 

the  saxon  tion  the  dim  records  ot  a  vanished  past  in  the  vain 
shore.  ]10pe  0f  recalling  the  life  that  our  fathers  lived  in 
449-C.500.  their  homeland  by  the  Baltic.  From  the  hour  when 
they  set  foot  on  the  sands  of  Thanet  we  follow  the 
story  of  Englishmen  in  the  land  they  made  their 
own.  There  is  little  to  catch  the  eye  in  Ebbsfleet 
itself,  a  mere  lift  of  ground  with  a  few  gray  cottages 
dotted  over  it,  cut  off  nowadays  from  the  sea  by  a 
reclaimed  meadow  and  a  sea-wall.  Taken  as  a  whole, 
indeed,  the  scene  has  a  wild  beauty  of  its  own.  To 
the  right  the  white  curve  of  Ramsgate  cliffs  looks 
down  on  the  crescent  of  Pegwell  Bay  ;  while  far  away 
to  the  left  across  gray  marsh-levels,  where  tiny  smoke- 
wreaths  mark  the  sites  of  Richborough  and  Sand- 
wich,  the  coast-line  bends  dimly  to  the  fresh  rise  of 
cliffs  beyond  Deal.  But  a  higher  sense  than  that  of 
beauty  draws  us  to  the  landing-place  of  our  fathers. 
No  spot  in  Britain  can  be  so  sacred  to  Englishmen 
as  that  which  first  felt  the  tread  of  English  feet. 
Everything  in  the  character  of  the  ground  confirms 
the  tradition  which  fixes  this  spot  at  Ebbsfleet ;  for, 
great  as  the  physical  changes  of  the  country  have 
been  since  the  fifth  century,  they  have  told  little  on 
its  main  features.  At  the  time  of  Hengest’s  landing 
a  broad  inlet  of  sea  parted  Thanet  from  the  main¬ 
land  of  Britain;  for  the  marshes  which  stretch  from 
Reculver  to  Sandwich  were  then,  as  they  remained 
for  centuries,1  a  wide  sea-channel,  hardly  less  than 

1  In  Bseda’s  day  this  channel  was  about  three  furlongs  wide  (Baeda, 
Hist.  Eccl.  lib.  i.  c.  25).  The  tolls  of  the  ferry  over  it  at  Sarre  were 
still  valuable  in  Edward  the  Third’s  days ;  and  it  was  not  till  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


29 


a  mile  across,  through  which  vessels  from  Gaul  chap.  i. 
commonly  made  their  way  into  the  estuary  of  the  The  con- 
Thames.  The  mouth  of  this  inlet  was  narrowed  by  thesaxon 
two  sand-spits,  now  lost  in  the  general  level  of  the  Shore- 
soil,  but  which  at  that  time  jutted  out  from  either  449  c.soo. 
shore  into  the  waves.  On  the  southern  spit  stands 
the  present  town  of  Sandwich,  while  the  northern  is 
still  known  by  the  name  of  Ebbsfleet.  If  the  war¬ 
ships  of  the  pirates,  therefore,  were  cruising  off  the 
coast  at  the  moment  when  the  bargain  which  gave 
them  Thanet  was  struck,  their  disembarkation  at 
Ebbsfleet,  where  they  first  touched  its  soil,  was  nat¬ 
ural  enough.  The  choice  of  the  spot  suggests,  too, 
that  their  landing  was  a  peaceful  one.  Richbor- 
ough,  a  fortress  whose  broken  ramparts  rise  hard  by 
above  the  gray  flats  of  Minster  Marsh,  and  which 
was  then  the  common  landing-place  of  travellers 
from  Gaul,  was  too  important  a  spot  to  have  been 
left  without  a  British  garrison.  Even  if  it  had  ceased 
to  be  the  station  of  the  fleet  that  guarded  the  Chan- 
nel,  it  still  commanded  the  road  which  ran  through 
Kent  to  London ;  and  some  force  must  have  re¬ 
placed  the  legionary  troops  that  held  it  when  it  was 
the  headquarters  of  the  Count  of  the  Saxon  Shore. 

That  no  record  remains  of  any  encounter  with  these 
troops  at  Richborough  may  well  have  been  because 
the  Jutes  who  landed  under  Hengest  landed  not  as 
enemies,  but  as  allies. 

The  after-course  of  events,  indeed,  seems  to  show  The  jutes 
that  the  choice  of  this  landing-place  was  the  result7" 

time  of  Henry  the  Seventh  that  the  gradual  silting-up  of  the  inlet 
forced  Kent  to  replace  the  ferry  by  a  bridge  and  road  at  this  point 
(Archaeol.  Cantiana,  vol.  v.  p.  306). 


-o  the  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

chap.  i.  of  a  settled  design.1  Between  the  Briton  and  his 
The  con-  hireling  soldiers  there  could  be  little  trust.  Quar- 
t he  Saxon  ters  in  Thanet  would  satisfy  the  followers  of  Hen- 
shore.  gest,2  who  thus  lay  encamped  within  sight  of  their 
449-c.  sop,  fellow  -  pirates  in  the  Channel,  and  who  felt  them¬ 
selves  secured  against  the  treachery  which  had  often 


proved  fatal  to  the  Germans  whom  Rome  called  to 
her  aid  by  the  broad  inlet  that  parted  their  camp 
from  the  mainland.  But  the  choice  was  no  less 


1  We  are  thrown  here  wholly  on  Gildas,  sec.  23. 

3  Solinus  speaks  of  Thanet  as  fruitful  in  cornfields  (Monum. 
Hist.  Brit.  p.  x.). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


31 


satisfactory  to  the  provincial  himself,  trembling —  chap.  r. 
and,  as  the  event  proved,  justly  trembling — lest  in  The  con- 
his  zeal  against  the  Piet  he  had  brought  an  even  ^saxon 
fiercer  foe  into  Britain.  For  his  dangerous  allies  Shore- 
were  cooped  in  a  corner  of  the  land,  and  parted  449~c' 500 
from  the  bulk  of  Britain  by  a  sea -channel  which 
was  guarded  by  the  strongest  fortresses' of  the  coast. 

The  need  of  such  precautions  was  seen  in  the  dis¬ 
putes  which  arose  as  soon  as  the  work  for  which 
the  mercenaries  had  been  hired  was  done.  In  the 
first  years  that  followed  after  their  landing,  Jute  and 
Briton  fought  side  by  side ;  and  the  Piets  are  said 
to  have  at  last  been  scattered  to  the  winds  in  a 
great  battle  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Britain.  But 
danger  from  the  Piet  was  hardly  over  when  danger 
came  from  the  Jutes  themselves.  Their  numbers 
probably  grew  fast  as  the  news  of  their  settlement 
in  Thanet  spread  among  their  fellow -pirates  who 
were  haunting  the  Channel ;  and  with  the  increase 
of  their  number  must  have  grown  the  difficulty  of 
supplying  them  with  rations  and  pay. 

The  dispute  which  rose  over  these  questions  was  Hengesf 
at  last  closed  by  Hengest’s  men  with  a  threat  of 
war.  But  the  threat,  as  we  have  seen,  was  no  easy 
one  to  carry  out.* 1  Right  across  their  path  in  any 


1  In  tracing  the  English  conquest  of  Kent,  as  in  the  conquest  of 
Sussex  and  Wessex,  I  have  been  mainly  guided  by  the  researches  of 
Dr.  Guest  (Early  English  Settlements  in  South  Britain,  in  the  Sal¬ 
isbury  vol.  of  Proceedings  of  the  Archaeological  Institute  for  1849). 

I  cannot,  with  Mr.  Freeman,  profess  myself  “an  unreserved  follower 
of  that  illustrious  scholar;”  for  the  advance  of  linguistic  science 
has  set  aside  many  of  the  conclusions  he  has  drawn  from  Welsh 
philology,  while,  in  his  researches  into  the  history  of  the  princes  of 
North  Wales  and  Damnonia,  he  has  placed  far  too  great  a  reliance 
on  the  documents,  many  spurious  and  all  tampered  with,  contained 


32 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  i.  attack  upon  Britain  stretched  the  inlet  of  sea  that 
The  con-  parted  Thanet  from  the  mainland,  a  strait  which  was 
the^axon  then  traversable  only  at  low  water*  1  by  a  long  and 
shore.  dangerous  ford,  and  guarded  at  either  mouth  by  for- 
449-c. sop,  tresses.  The  channel  of  the  Medway,  with  the  forest 
of  the  Weald  bending  round  from  it  to  the  south, 
furnished  a  second  line  of  defence  for  our  West 
Kent  and  Sussex ;  while  the  strongholds  of  Dover 
and  Lymne  guarded  their  portion  of  the  Saxon 
Shore.  Great,  however,  as  these  difficulties  were, 
they  failed  to  check  the  onset  of  the  Jutes.  From 
the  spot  at  which  the  conflict  between  Hengest  and 
the  Britons  took  place  in  455,'  we  may  gather  that 
his  attack  was  a  sudden  one,  and  that  the  success  of 
the  invaders  was  due  mainly  to  a  surprise.  The  in¬ 
let  may  have  been  crossed  before  any  force  could  be 
collected  to  oppose  the  English  onset,  or  the  boats 
of  the  Jutes  may  have  pushed  from  the  centre  of  it 
up  the  channel  of  its  tributary,  the  Stour,  itself  at 
that  time  a  wide  and  navigable  estuary,  to  the  town 
that  stood  on  the  site  of  our  Canterbury,  the  town 
of  Durovernum.  Durovernum  had  grown  up  among 


in  the  Book  of  Llandaff.  (For  the  real  character  of  these  docu¬ 
ments,  see  Mr.  Haddan’s  note  in  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  vol. 

i.  p.  147.)  But  when  these  deductions  are  made,  they  do  little  to 
lessen  the  debt  which  our  early  history  owes  to  Dr.  Guest.  By  his 
combination  of  archaeological  research  and  knowledge  of  the  ground, 
with  an  exact  study  of  the  meagre  documentary  evidence,  he  has 
not  only  restored,  so  far  as  they  can  be  restored,  many  pages  of  a 
lost  chapter  of  our  history — that  of  the  conquest  of  Britain — but  he 
has  furnished  a  method  for  after-inquirers,  of  which  I  have  striven, 
however  imperfectly,  to  avail  myself  in  the  pages  that  follow. 

1  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  53,  note.  By  Basda’s  day  this  inlet  was  known 
to  Englishmen  as  the  Wantsum. 

-  E.  Chron.  a.  455. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


33 


the  marshes  of  the  Stour,  a  little  cluster  of  houses  chap.  i. 
raised  above  the  morass  on  a  foundation  of  piles.  The  con- 
But  small  as  the  town  was,  it  stood  at  a  point  where  thesaxon 
the  roads  from  Richborough,  Dover,  and  Reculver  shore- 
united  to  pass  by  a  ford  traversable  at  low  water  on449-c-500 
their  way  to  London ;  and  the  military  importance 
of  its  position  was  marked  by  the  rough  oval  of 
massive  walls  which  lay  about  it.  The  strength  of 
the  place  was  doubled  by  the  broad  river  channel 
that  guarded  it  on  the  northwest  and  the  marshy 
ground  which  stretched  along  its  northeastern  side. 

In  this  quarter  a  Christian  church  had  risen  on  a  site 
destined  to  be  occupied  in  after-days  by  the  mother- 
church  of  all  England ;  while  another  church,  that 
was  to  be  hardly  less  memorable  in  our  religious 
annals,  lay  without  the  walls  of  the  town  on  the 
road  to  Richborough.1  But  neither  wall  nor  marshes 
saved  Durovernum  from  Hengest’s  onset,  and  the 
town  was  left  in  blackened  and  solitary  ruin  as  the 
invaders  pushed  along  the  road  to  London. 

No  obstacle  seems  to  have  checked  their  march  Battle  of 
from  the  Stour  to  the  Medway.  Passing  over  the 
heights  which  were  crowned  with  the  forest  of 
Blean,  they  saw  the  road  strike  like  an  arrow  past 
the  line  of  Frodsham  Creek  through  a  rich  and  fer¬ 
tile  district,  where  country-houses  and  farms  clus¬ 
tered  thickly  on  either  side  of  it,  and  where  the 
burnt  grain  which  is  still  found  among  their  ruins 
may  tell  of  the  smoke-track  that  marked  the  Jutish 
advance."  As  they  passed  the  Swale,  however,  and 

1  Faussett’s  “  Canterbury  till  Domesday,”  Archseol.  Journal,  xxxii. 

378 ;  and  “  Roman  Cemeteries  in  Canterbury,”  Archaiol.  Cantiana, 
iv.  27.  2  Murray’s  Kent,  p.  70,  of  remains  at  Hartlip. 


34 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  i.  looked  to  their  right  over  the  potteries  whose  refuse 
The  con-  still  strews  the  mud-banks  of  Upchurch,  their  march 
the  Saxon  seems  to  have  swerved  abruptly  to  the  south. 

shore.  Whether  they  were  drawn  aside  by  greed  of 
449-c.  goo,  plunder — for  the  Medway  valley  was  then,  as  now, 
one  of  the  most  fruitful  and  populous  districts  of 
the  Caint — or  whether  they  were  forced  by  the 
guarded  walls  of  the  town  which  is  now  our  Roch¬ 
ester  '  to  turn  southward  for  a  ford  across  the  river, 
the  march  of  the  Jutes  bent  at  this  point  along  a 
ridge  of  low  hills  which  forms  the  bound  of  the 
river-valley  on  the  east.  The  country  through 
which  it  led  them  was  full  of  memories  of  a  past 
which  had  even  then  faded  from  the  minds  of  men ; 
for  the  hill -slopes  which  they  traversed  were  the 
grave-ground  of  a  vanished  race,  and  scattered  among 
the  boulders  that  strewed  the  soil  rose  cromlechs 
and  huge  barrows  of  the  dead.  One  mighty  relic 
survives  in  the  monument  now  called  Kit’s  Coty 
House,  a  cromlech  which  had  been  linked  in  old 
days  by  an  avenue  of  huge  stones  to  a  burial- 
ground  some  few  miles  off  near  the  village  of  Ad¬ 
dington.  It  was  from  a  steep  knoll  on  which  the 
gray,  weather-beaten  stones  of  this  monument  are 
reared  that  the  view  of  their  first  battle-ground 
would  break  on  Hengest’s  warriors;  and  a  lane 
which  still  leads  down  from  it  through  peaceful  home¬ 
steads  would  guide  them  across  the  river-valley  to  a 
ford  which  has  left  its  name  in  the  village  of  Ayles- 
ford  that  overhangs  it.  At  this  point,  which  is  still 
the  lowest  ford  across  the  Medway,  and  where  an 


1  See  G.  T.  Clark,  “  Rochester  Castle,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxxii.  207. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


35 


ancient  trackway  crossed  the  river,1  the  British  lead-  CHAP- r- 
ers  must  have  taken  post  for  the  defence  of  West  The  con- 
Kent;  but  the  Chronicle  of  the  conquering  people2  the  Saxon 
tells  nothing  of  the  rush  that  may  have  carried  the  Shore 
ford,  or  of  the  fight  that  went  struggling  up  through  449  c- 500 
the  village.  We  hear  only  that  Horsa  fell  in  the 
moment  of  victory;  and  the  flint  heap  of  Horsted 
which  has  long  preserved  his  name,  and  was  held  in 
after-time  to  mark  his  grave,  is  thus  the  earliest  of 
those  monuments  of  English  valor  of  which  West¬ 
minster  is  the  last  and  noblest  shrine.3 

The  victory  of  Aylesford  was  followed  by  a  politi .  Repulse  oj 
cal  change  among  the  assailants,  whose  loose  organ¬ 
ization  around  ealdormen  was  exchanged  for  a 
stricter  union.  Aylesford,  we  are  told,4 5  was  no  sooner 
won  than  “  Hengest  took  to  the  kingdom,  and  Mflle, 
his  son.”  The  change,  no  doubt,  gave  fresh  vigor 
to  their  attack :  and  the  two  kings  pushed  forward 
in  457  from  the  Medway  to  the  conquest  of  West 
Kent.  Fording  the  Darent  at  Dartford,  they  again 
met  the  British  forces  at  the  passage  of  the  Cray,  a 
little  stream  that  falls  through  a  quiet  valley  from 
the  chalk  downs  hard  by  at  Orpington.  Their  vic¬ 
tory  must  have  been  complete,  for  at  its  close,  as  the 
Chronicle  of  their  conquerors  tells  us,  the  Britons 
“  forsook  Kent-land  and  fled  with  much  fear  to  Lon¬ 
don.”"  But  the  ground  Hengest  had  won  seems 


:  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  47.  For  antiquities  of  Roman  date  found 

in  this  ford,  see  Archneol.  Cantiana,  i.  174.  s  E.  Chron.  a.  455. 

3  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  lib.  i.  c.  15 ;  and  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  48. 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  455. 

5  E.  Chron.  a.  457.  It  is  possible  that  the  “  pagus”  or  territory  of 
Londinium  south  of  the  Thames  extended  to  the  Cray,  as  this  was 
the  bound  of  its  citizens’  right  of  chase  in  the  Middle  Ages. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


36 

chap.  i.  soon  to  have  been  won  back  again.  If  we  trust 

The  con-  British  tradition,  the  battle  at  Crayford  was  fol- 

quest  of  ....  .  .  J 

the  saxon  lowed  by  a  political  revolution  in  Britain  itself, 
shore.  qqie  overthrow  of  the  native  leader  Vortigern  may 

449-c.5oo.  have  proved  fatal  to  his  cause  ;  it  would  seem,  at  any 
rate,  that  the  Romanized  Britons  rose  in  revolt 
under  Aurelius  Ambrosianus,  a  descendant  of  the 
last  Roman  general  who  claimed  the  purple  as  an 
emperor  in  Britain ;  and  that  the  success  of  Aure¬ 
lius  drove  his  rival  to  the  mountains  of  the  west.1 
The  revolution  revived  for  a  while  the  energy  of  the 
province.  Fresh  from  his  triumph  over  Vortigern, 
Aurelius  marched  on  the  invaders  who  were  turning 
Kent  into  a  desert,  and  his  advance  forced  the  Jutes 
to  surrender  their  conquests  and  to  fall  back  on 
their  stronghold  of  Thanet.  The  fortresses  of  Rich- 
borough  and  Reculver,  at  either  mouth  of  the  inlet 
which  parted  Thanet  from  the  mainland,  still  re¬ 
mained  in  British  hands,  and,  basing  themselves  on 
the  former,  the  troops  of  Aurelius  seem  to  have  suc¬ 
ceeded  for  some  years  in  prisoning  Hengest  in  his 
island  lair.2 

Richbor-  Richborough  had  long  served  as  the  headquarters 

ough .  0  0  #  1 

of  the  legion  whose  business  it  was  to  guard  the 
Saxon  Shore,  and  its  site  was  one  of  great  military 
strength.3  The  mouth  of  the  Wantsum  was  nar- 
rowed,  as  we  have  seen,  by  the  two  jutting  sand-spits 
of  Ebbsfleet  and  Sandwich  ;  but  within  these  the 
estuary  widened  again  into  a  northern  and  a  south¬ 
ern  bay — the  one  beneath  the  slopes  of  Minster,  the 


1  Gildas,  Hist.  sec.  25  ;  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  50. 

2  Nennius,  sec.  43,  44,  45  ;  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  53. 

3  See  map  of  the  district  at  this  time  in  Archajol.  Cantiana,  viii.  14. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


37 


other  between  Sandwich  and  the  little  hamlet  of  CHyp-  l- 
Fleet.  The  last  bay  formed  a  shallow  lagoon,  whose  The  con- 
oyster-beds  were  famous  in  the  markets  of  Rome,  the^axon 
and  a  small  rise  or  islet  in  the  midst  of  it  was  shore- 
crowned  by  the  massive  walls  of  Richborough.  449  c-5oo. 
The  marble  buildings  within  these  walls  had  served, 
no  doubt,  for  the  residence  of  the  Count  of  the  Saxon 
Shore.  Hard  by  them  stood  an  amphitheatre  for  the 
games  of  the  legionaries,  and  the  hill  slope  was  cov¬ 
ered  by  a  town  which  the  fortress  protected.  Small 
as  was  the  area  of  the  citadel,  its  walls  were  twelve 
feet  thick  and  nearly  thirty  feet  high,  and  both  faces 
and  angles  were  strengthened  by  bastions  of  solid 
masonry.1  Against  walls  such  as  these,  or  those  of 
its  sister  fortress  at  Reculver,  the  unskilled  efforts 
of  the  Jutes  could  do  little;  and  though  no  attempt 
seems  to  have  been  made  to  dislodge  them  from 
Thanet,  the  British  forces  remained  strong  enough 
to  prison  them  for  some  years  within  the  limits  of 
the  island. 

In  46s,  however,  the  petty  conflicts  which  had Final  c?n/ 
gone  on  along  the  shores  of  the  Wantsum  made  Caint. 
way  for  a  decisive  struggle.  Hengest  may  have 
been  strengthened  by  reinforcements  from  his  home 
land ;  while  the  losses  of  Aurelius  show  that  he 
had  mustered  the  whole  strength  of  the  island  to 
meet  the  expected  onset.  But  the  overthrow  of  the 
Britons  at  Wipped’s-fleet2  was  so  terrible  that  all 
hope  of  preserving  the  bulk  of  Kent  seems  from  this 


1  See  Roach  Smith’s  Antiquities  of  Richborough,  Reculver,  and 
Lymne,  for  excavations  on  these  sites. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  465.  “  There  twelve  Wealish  ealdormen  they 

slew.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


38 

chap.  i.  moment  to  have  been  abandoned ;  and  no  further 
The  con-  struggle  disturbed  the  Jutes  in  its  conquest  and  set¬ 
tle  Saxon  tlement.  It  was  only  along  its  southern  shore  that 
shore.  tjie  Britons  now  held  their  ground,  and  we  can  hard- 
449-C.500.  ]y  doubt  it  was  the  reduction  of  the  fortresses  in 
this  quarter  which  occupied  the  later  years  of  Hen- 
gest.1  Richborough  and  Reculver  must  have  yield* 
ed  at  last  to  his  arms ;  the  beacon-fire  which  had  so 
long  guided  the  Roman  galleys  along  the  Channel 
ceased  to  blaze  on  the  cliffs  of  Dover;  and  a  final 
victory  of  the  Jutes  in  473  may  mark  the  moment 
when  they  reached  the  rich  pastures  which  the 
Roman  engineers  had  reclaimed  from  Romney 
Marsh.  A  fortress  at  Lymne,  whose  broken  walls 
look  from  the  slope  to  which  they  cling  over  the 
great  flat  at  their  feet,  was  the  key  to  this  district ; 
and  with  its  fall  the  work  of  the  first  conqueror  was 
done.  In  this  quarter,  at  least,  the  resistance  of  the 
provincials  was  utterly  broken ;  in  the  last  conflict 
the  chronicle  of  the  invaders  boasts  that  the  Britons 
“  fled  from  the  English  as  from  fire.” 2 
Landing  With  this  advance  to  the  mouth  of  the  Weald,  the 
south  work  of  Hengest’s  men  came  to  an  end;  nor  did 
Sax°nS.  juj-es  from  this  time  play  any  important  part  in 
the  attack  on  the  island,  for  their  after-gains  were 
limited  to  the  Isle  of  Wight  and  a  few  districts  on 
the  Southampton  Water.  Fully,  indeed,  as  the  Caint 
was  won,  no  district  was  less  fitted  to  serve  as  a 
starting-point  in  any  attack  on  Britain  at  large. 
While  the  Andredsweald,  which  lay  in  an  impen¬ 
etrable  mass  along  its  western  border,  extended 


Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  54. 


3  E.  Chron.  a.  473. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


39 


southward  behind  the  swamps  of  Romney  Marsh  to  chap.  i. 
the  coast  of  the  Channel,  a  morass  that  stretched  The  con¬ 
front  the  hills  of  Dulwich  to  the  banks  of  the  the  saxon 
Thames  blocked  the  narrow  strip  of  open  country  Shore- 
between  the  northern  edge  of  the  Weald  and  the  449-0.500. 
river.  The  more  tempting  water-way  along  the 


Thames  itself  was  barred  by  the  walls,  if  not  by  the 
fortified  bridge,  of  London.  The  strength  of  these 
barriers  is  proved  by  the  long  pause  which  took 
place  in  the  advance  of  the  Jutes,  for  a  century  was 
to  pass  before  they  made  any  effort  to  penetrate 
further  into  the  island.  But  their  success  had  called 
a  mightier  foe  to  the  work  of  invasion  in  the  free- 


40 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  i.  hooters  whose  daring  and  whose  ruthlessness  were 
The  con-  being  painted  at  this  moment  by  the  pen  of  Sido- 
the  Saxon  nius.  It  was  pirates  of  the  Saxon  race,  with  Frisians, 
shore.  perhaps,  who  sailed  under  their  name,1  whose  long 
449-c. sop,  pillage  of  the  coast  from  the  Wash  to  the  Solent 
had  been  preserved  in  its  name  of  the  Saxon  Shore. 
It  was  certain  that  the  conquests  of  Hengest  wrould 
call  these  rivals  to  their  prey,  and  the  settlement  of 
the  Jutes  was  soon  followed  by  Saxon  descents  on 
either  side  of  the  Caint.2  We  know  best  their  de¬ 
scent  to  the  westward  of  it.  Beyond  Romney 
Marsh  along  the  Channel  the  creeks  and  inlets 
which  break  the  clay  flats  to  the  westward  of  the 
Arun  offered  easy  entrance  for  the  boats  of  the 
pirates;  and  here  tradition  placed  the  landing  in  477 
of  Saxon  war  bands  who  followed  FElle  and  his 
three  sons,  Cymen,  Wlencing,  and  Cissa.  The  first 
gave  his  name  to  the  landing-place  of  the  pirates  in 
the  Selsea  peninsula,  Cymen’s  ora  or  Keynor ;  while 
the  name  of  the  last  is  said  to  be  preserved  in  that 
of  Chichester,  a  borough  that  grew  up  at  a  later 
time  on  the  ruins  of  the  little  town  of  Regnum, 
which  must  have  been  the  earliest  object  of  this  at¬ 
tack.  Their  raid  was  a  successful  one ;  and  after 
severe  losses  the  Britons  of  this  district  fled  to  the 
Andredsweald.3  But  the  weakness  of  the  invading 


1  Procopius,  De  Bell. Goth.  lib.  iv.  20,  mentions  “  Frisians”  among 

the  three  peoples  of  Britain. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  lib.  i.  c.  15.  • 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  477.  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  54.  The  brief  entries  of 
the  Chronicle  are  largely  expanded  by  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  who 
may  have  used  poems  or  annals  still  extant  in  his  time,  and  whose 
story  here  at  least  falls  in  with  the  geographical  features  of  the 
locality. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


41 


force  is  shown  by  the  slowness  with  which  the 
Chronicle  of  the  conquerors  pictures  yElle  as  fight¬ 
ing  his  way  in  battle  after  battle  across  the  streams 
which  cleave  this  strip  of  coast  on  their  way  to  the 
Channel.1  It  was  only  after  fourteen  years  of  strug¬ 
gle  that  the  Saxons  reached  the  point  where  the 
south  clowns  abut  on  the  sea  at  Beachy  Head,  and 
dipped  down  in  the  district  that  formed  the  mouth 
of  the  Weald — a  district  guarded  by  the  fortress  of 
Anderida,  whose  massive  walls  still  cover  a  rise 
above  the  general  level  of  the  coast  at  a  spot  which 
under  its  later  name  of  Pevensey  was  to  witness 
the  landing  of  a  greater  conqueror  in  William  the 
Norman. 

The  siege  of  Anderida  proved  a  long  and  a  diffi¬ 
cult  one.  Eastward  of  the  fortress  the  ground  lifts 
slowly  towards  our  Hastings,  where  a  sandstone  ridge 
abuts  upon  the  sea.  This  Forest-ridge,  as  it  is  called, 
is,  in  fact,  the  termination  of  a  low  rise  which  forms 
a  water-parting  through  the  whole  length  of  the 
Weald,  and  which  throws  down  the  streams  of  the 
Weald  to  north  and  south  by  channels  that  they 
have  hewn  in  the  chalk  downs  on  either  side  of  it. 
Then,  as  now,  the  ground  was  covered  with  wood¬ 
land  and  copses ;  but  under  the  Roman  rule  the  life 
of  this  district  presented  a  striking  contrast  to  the 
solitude  and  silence  of  the  rest  of  the  Andredsweald.2 
Hid  in  its  wooded  gorges  we  find  traces  of  a  busy 
population  of  miners — the  small  round  pits  from 
which  the  nodules  of  their  ore  were  dug,  rude  smelt- 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  485,  for  the  fight  at  Mearcredsburn. 

2  See  Wright’s  description  of  Pevensey  in  his  Wanderings  of  an 
Antiquary. 


chap.  r. 

The  Con¬ 
quest  of 
the  Saxon 
Shore. 

449-c.  500. 


A  nderida. 


42 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  i.  ing-furnaces  on  the  hill-slope,  big  cinder-heaps  cov- 
The  con-  ered  nowadays  with  oak  and  elm.  It  must  have 
thesaxon  been  the  attacks  of  these  miners  that  made  the  task 
shore.  0f  qie  besiegers  so  hard  a  one.  If  we  may  trust  the 
449-C.500.  tradition  of  a  later  time,1  the  Britons  swarmed  like 
bees  round  the  English  lines,  assailing  them  by 
night,  and  withdrawing  at  dawn  to  the  gorges  of 
the  Forest-ridge,  where  they  lay  in  ambush  for  the 
parties  that  attacked  them.  An  attempt  to  storm 
the  town  would  at  once  draw  the  miners  on  the  rear 
of  its  assailants ;  and  when  the  besiegers,  galled  by 
the  storm  of  arrows  and  javelins,  turned  from  their 
task  to  encounter  these  foes,  the  Britons  drew  back 
to  their  fastnesses  in  the  Weald.  It  was  not  till 
yElle  was  strong  enough  to  detach  a  part  of  his 
force  to  cover  the  siege  that  the  resistance  of  the 


town  came  to  an  end.  The  terrible  words  of  the 
Chronicle  tell  the  story  of  its  fall :  the  English  “  slew 
all  that  were  therein,  nor  was  there  henceforth  one 
Briton  left.”2  The  work  of  slaughter,  we  can  hardly 
doubt,  was  soon  completed  by  the  attack  and  con¬ 
quest  of  the  brave  iron-workers  who  had  failed  to 
avert  the  doom  of  Anderida ;  and  from  that  time  to 
the  days  of  the  Edwards  no  sound  of  quarryman  or 
forge  was  heard  in  the  gorges  of  the  Forest-ridge. 

Of  the  victories  or  settlement  of  the  Saxons  along 
the  coast  from  Chichester  to  Pevensey  we  know  lit¬ 
tle  or  nothing.  Nowhere,  indeed,  was  the  land  richer 


1  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  (ed.  T.  Arnold),  p.  45. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  491.  Huntingdon  adds,  “  Ita  urbem  destruxerunt 
quod  nunquam  postea  re-edificata  est :  locus  tantum  quasi  nobilis- 
simae  urbis  transeuntibus  ostenditur  desolatus  ”  (/'.  e.  in  the  twelfth 
century),  Hist.  Angl.  (ed.  Arnold),  p.  45. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


43 


in  plunder ;  for  the  coast  had  been  occupied  by  the  chap. r- 
Romans  from  the  date  of  their  first  settlement  in  The  con- 
Britain,  and  the  country  side  was  dotted  with  the  theSaxon 
homes  of  the  wealthier  provincials.  A  country-  Sh0^e- 
house  such  as  that  whose  remains  have  been  dis- 449yc-_50Q 
covered  at  Bignor,  a  few  miles  from  Chichester, 
lights  up  for  us  the  social  life  which  was  swept 
away  by  the  Saxon  sword.1  The  household  build¬ 
ings  of  this  mansion  formed  a  court  more  than  a 
hundred  feet  square,  round  the  inner  side  of  which 
ran  a  covered  colonnade,  with  a  tessellated  pavement 
arranged  in  fanciful  patterns.  Within  the  house  it¬ 
self  the  hall  with  its  central  fountain  preserved  the 
southern  type  of  domestic  building  that  the  Roman 
builders  brought  from  their  sunnier  land,  as  the  fur¬ 
nace  which  heated  the  floor  of  the  banqueting-room 
behind  showed  the  ingenuity  with  which  they  ac¬ 
commodated  themselves  to  the  needs  of  a  sterner 
climate.  The  walls  of  the  larger  rooms  glowed  with 
frescoes,  fragments  of  which  retain  much  of  their 
original  vividness  of  color,  while  their  floors  were 
of  elaborate  and  costly  mosaic -work.  Figures  of 
dancing  nymphs  filled  the  compartments  of  one 
chamber,  a  picture  of  the  rape  of  Ganymedes  formed 
the  centre  of  another,  a  third  was  gay  with  pictures 
of  the  Seasons  or  of  gladiatorial  games,  where  Cupids 
sported  as  retiarii  and  secutores  of  the  amphitheatre. 

But  no  traces  remain  of  the  line  of  low  huts  which 
here,  as  elsewhere,  no  doubt,  leaned  against  the  outer 
wall  that  girt  in  the  circuit  of  buildings — huts  which 
housed  the  serfs  who  tilled  the  lands  of  their  owner, 

1  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  p.  243.  There  is 
a  fuller  description  in  his  Wanderings  of  an  Antiquary. 


44 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  i.  and  whose  squalor,  in  its  dark  contrast  with  the 
The  con-  comfort  and  splendor  of  the  mansion  itself,  would 
the  Saxon  have  painted  better  for  us  than  a  thousand  passages 
shore.  from  }aw  or  chronicle  the  union  of  material  wealth 
449-c. 500.  with  social  degradation  that  lay  like  a  dark  shadow 
over  the  Roman  world. 

Landing  Dimly  as  we  trace  this  winning  of  the  southeast- 

of  the  J  ,  ,  .  P  .  . 

East  Sax-  ern  coast  by  the  men  who  were  afterwards  known  as 
ons'  the  Sussex  or  South  Saxons,  we  pass  as  from  light 
into  darkness  when  we  turn  to  the  work  of  another 
Saxon  tribe  who  must  at  about  the  same  time  have 
been  conquering  and  settling  on  the  other  side  of 
the  Caint,  to  the  north  of  the  estuary  of  the  Thames.1 
In  the  utter  lack  of  any  written  record  of  the  strug¬ 
gle  in  this  quarter,  we  can  only  collect  stray  glimpses 
of  its  story  from  the  geographical  features  of  this 
district  and  from  its  local  names.  From  both  these 
sets  of  facts  we  are  drawn  to  the  conclusion  that  it 
was  not  from  the  Thames  that  this  district  was 
mainly  attacked.  In  that  quarter  there  was  little 
to  tempt  an  invader.  The  clay  flats  which  stretch 
along  the  coast  of  Southern  Essex  were  then  but  a 
fringe  of  fever-smitten  and  desolate  fens,  while  the 
meadows  that  rise  from  them  to  the  west  were  part 
of  a  forest  tract  that  extended  to  the  marshes  of  the 
Lea.  The  whole  region,  indeed,  beyond  the  coast 


1  Huntingdon  (Hist.  Angl.  ed.  Arnold,  p.  49)  names  as  the  first 
East- Saxon  king,  Ercenwine  (or,  as  Florence  calls  him,  Hiscwine), 
whose  son  and  successor,  Sleda,  married  the  sister  of  Hithelberht 
of  Kent.  As  the  usage  elsewhere  was  for  the  conquerors  to  gather 
into  a  kingdom  some  time  after  their  first  conquest,  this  would 
bring  the  landing  in  Essex  to  about  the  time  of  the  landing  in  Sus¬ 
sex,  which  is  of  itself  probable  enough.  Malmesbury  makes  Sleda 
their  first  king  (Gest.  Reg.  ed.  Hardy,  lib.  i.  sec.  98). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


45 


was  thick  with  woodland.  In  the  Middle  Ages  all 
Essex  lay  within  the  bounds  of  the  royal  forest ; 
and  its  timber  church-towers  and  log-framed  home¬ 
steads  still  recall  its  wealth  of  wood.  To  the  north¬ 
ward,  however,  the  country  became  somewhat  clearer; 
and  here  a  tempting  inlet  offered  itself  in  the  estuary 
where  the  waters  of  the  Chelm  and  the  Stour  found 
a  common  passage  to  the  sea,  and  where  Camulo- 
dunum  offered  a  city  to  sack.1 2  The  town  stood,  like 
its  successor,  Colchester,  on  a  steep  rise  or  “  dun,” 
round  whose  northern  and  eastern  sides  bent  the 
river  Colne.  Camulodunum  was  the  oldest  of  the 
Roman  settlements  in  Britain :  temples  and  public 
buildings  had  already  risen,  indeed,  within  its  bounds 
when  the  revolt  under  Boadicea  broke  the  course  of 
Roman  conquest.  Its  size  and  massive  walls'  prove 
it  to  have  become  in  later  days  one  of  the  busiest 
and  wealthiest  towns  of  the  province ;  and  from  the 
after-settlement  of  its  foes  we  may  probably  gather 
that  the  district  beneath  its  sway  spread  northward 
as  far  as  the  Stour. 

It  was  in  the  valleys  of  the  Colne  and  Stour  that 
the  East  Saxons,  as  these  warriors  came  to  be  called, 
seem  mainly  to  have  settled  after  the  fall  of  Camulo¬ 
dunum.  But  here,  as  in  their  other  conquest  in  the 
south,  the  settlement  of  the  Saxons  was  small  and 
unimportant.  Neither  tract,  indeed,  was  large  or 
fruitful  enough  to  draw  to  it  any  great  mass  of  the 

1  For  Camulodunum,  see  map  in  Markham’s  Life  of  Fairfax, 
p.  309,  etc.,  and  Freeman,  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxxiv.  4 7. 

2  The  circuit  is  more  perfect  than  anywhere  else  in  Britain ;  but 
the  walls  themselves  have  been  reconstructed  in  later  days.  Free¬ 
man,  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxxiv.  55.  The  museum  of  the  town  is  rich 
in  Roman  relics. 


chap.  1. 

The  Con¬ 
quest  of 
the  Saxon 
Shore. 

449-c.  500. 


Their 

bounda¬ 

ries. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


46 

chap.  i.  conquerors,  while  from  neither  was  it  easy  to  push 
The  con-  across  their  bounds  into  more  fertile  districts.  As 
the  Saxon  the  South  Saxons  were  prisoned  within  their  nar- 
shore.  rQW  strjp  0f  COast  by  the  reaches  of  the  Andreds- 
449-^500.  weaid,  so  the  East  Saxons  found  themselves  as  ef¬ 
fectually  barred  from  any  advance  into  the  island 


by  a  chain  of  dense  woodlands,  the  Waltham  Chace 
of  later  ages,  whose  scanty  relics  have  left  hardly 
more  than  the  names  of  Epping  and  Hainault  for¬ 
ests.  These  woodlands,  which  stretched  at  this  time 
in  a  dense  belt  on  either  side  the  Roding  along  the 
western  border  of  the  district  that  the  invaders  had 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


47 


won  from  the  Thames  to  the  open  downs  above 
Saffron  Walden,  and  were  backed  to  the  west  by 
the  marshy  valley  of  the  Lea,  whose  waters  widened 
into  an  estuary  as  it  reached  the  Thames,  seem  to 
have  been  wholly  uninhabited,  for  no  trace  remains 
in  their  area  of  military  stations  or  of  the  country- 
houses  or  burial-places  of  the  provincials.  How  im¬ 
passable,  in  fact,  these  fastnesses  had  been  found  by 
the  Romans  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  even  their 
road -makers  never  attempted  to  penetrate  them. 
The  lower  portion  of  the  Ermine  Street,  the  road  to 
the  north,  which  in  later  days  struck  direct  through 
this  district  from  London  to  Huntingdon,  did  not 
exist  in  Roman  times,  and  the  British  provincial  was 
forced  to  make  a  circuit  either  by  Leicester  or  Col¬ 
chester  on  his  way  to  Lincoln  and  York.1 

This  double  barrier  to  the  west  proved  formidable 
enough  to  hold  the  invaders  at  bay  for  almost  a 
hundred  years.  But  to  the  northward  no  such  bar¬ 
rier  hindered  the  East  Saxons  from  sharing  in  a 
fight  that  must  have  been  going  on  at  this  time  in 
the  chalk  uplands  which  rose  to  the  north  of  them 
across  the  Stour.  It  is  in  this  district  that  we  first 
meet  with  a  third  race  of  conquerors,  whose  work 
was  to  be  of  even  greater  moment  in  our  history 
than  that  of  Saxon  or  Jute.  The  men  who  were  to 
spread  along  the  Yare  and  the  Orwell,  and  to  march 
in  triumph  through  the  massive  gate  which  recalls 
the  strength  of  Roman  Lincoln,  whose  work  it  was 
to  colonize  Mid-Britain  and  the  line  of  the  Trent, 
as  well  as  to  win  for  their  own  the  vast  regions  be- 


CHAP.  I. 

The  Con- 
quest  of 
the  Saxon 
Shore. 

449-c.  500. 


Landing 
of  the 
Engle. 


1  Guest,  “  Four  Roman  Ways,”  Archoeol.  Journal,  xiv.  1 16. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  I. 

The  Con¬ 
quest  of 
the  Saxon 
Shore. 

449-C.500. 


The  East 
Engle. 


4S 

tween  the  Firth  of  Forth  and  the  Humber,  were 
drawn  from  a  tribe  whose  name  was  destined  to  ab¬ 
sorb  that  of  Saxon  and  Jute,  and  to  stamp  itself  on 
the  people  which  sprang  from  the  union  of  the  con¬ 
querors  of  Britain,  as  on  the  land  which  they  won.1 
These  were  the  Engle,  or  Englishmen.  The  bulk  of 
the  tribes  who  then  bore  this  name,  if  in  the  dark¬ 
ness  of  their  early  history  they  have  been  rightly 
traced  by  modern  research,  lay  probably  along  the 
middle  Elbe,  in  the  country  about  Magdeburg;  while 
fragments  of  the  same  race  were  found  on  the  Weser, 
in  what  is  now  known  as  Lower  Hanover  and  Olden¬ 
burg,  and  in  the  peninsula  which  juts  from  the  shores 
of  North  Germany  to  part  the  Baltic  and  the  North¬ 
ern  Seas." 

It  is  in  the  heart  of  this  peninsula  that  we  still  find 
the  district  which  preserves  their  name  of  Angeln,  or 
the  Engleland  ;  and,  from  the  desert  state  of  this  dis¬ 
trict  as  men  saw  it  hundreds  of  years  afterwards,* 3 
it  would  seem  that,  unlike  their  Saxon  neighbors,  the 
bulk  of  whom  remained  in  their  own  homesteads,  the 
whole  Engle  people  forsook  their  earlier  seats  for 
the  soil  of  Britain.  Such  a  transfer  would  account 
for  the  wide  area  of  their  conquests.  Of  their  inva¬ 
sion  or  settlement  no  chronicle  has  come  down  to 
us;4  but  their  first  descents  seem  to  have  been  aimed 


1  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15.  3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  45. 

3  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15. 

4  Of  the  conquest  of  East  Anglia,  Lincolnshire,  the  Fen-land,  Mid- 
Britain,  and  Yorkshire,  we  have  no  record,  either  on  the  part  of 
conquered  or  conquerors.  In  Northumbria  the  Chronicle  tells  only 
the  fact  of  Ida’s  elevation  to  the  kingship  and  seizure  of  Bam- 
borough ;  while  Nennius  preserves  a  faint  tradition  of  some  of  the 
earlier  conflicts.  We  are  forced,  therefore,  to  fall  back  on  the  in- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


49 


against  the  upland  into  which  the  northernmost  CHjyj  i- 
chalk-rises  that  diverge  from  the  Berkshire  Downs  The  con- 
widen  as  they  reach  the  sea.  This  tract,  which  the  saxon 
comprises  our  present  shires  of  Norfolk  and  Suf-  shore- 
folk,  had  drawn  settlers  to  it  from  the  earliest  times  449-0.5°°. 
of  British  history.  It  had  been  the  seat  of  the 
Iceni,  the  most  powerful  of  the  tribes  among  whom 
the  island  had  been  parted  before  the  Roman  rule, 
and  whose  name,  like  that  of  the  “  Gwent  ”  in  which 
they  lived,  was  preserved  in  a  Venta  Icenorum  that 
was  the  predecessor  of  our  Norwich.  The  downs 
which  form  its  western  portion  were,  for  the  most 
part,  stretches  of  heath  and  pasture,  over  which  wan¬ 
dered  huge  flocks  of  bustards ;  but  in  the  river- 
courses  that  break  through  the  levels  of  clay  and 
gravel  between  these  downs  and  the  sea,  population 
‘and  wealth  had  grown  steadily  through  the  ages  of 
Roman  rule ;  and  the  importance  of  the  country  was 
shown  by  the  care  with  which  the  provincial  admin¬ 
istration  had  guarded  its  coast. 


The  district  formed,  in  fact,  the  last  unconquered  Their 
remnant  of  the  Saxon  Shore.  But  only  their  ruins 
tell  us  of  the  fall  of  its  strongholds — of  Brancaster  on 
the  shore  of  the  Wash,  or  of  Garianonum  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Yare ;  while  not  even  its  ruins  remain 
to  tell  of  the  fall  of  Venta  Icenorum,  or  of  the  con¬ 
quest  of  the  district  that  lay  around  it.  All  we  learn 
from  the  scanty  record  of  later  days  is  that  the  as¬ 
sailants  of  this  region  came  direct  from  the  German 
shores  ;  that  their  attacks  were  “  many  and  oft and 


dications  given  us  by  archaeology  and  by  the  physical  character 
of  the  ground  itself  in  attempting  a  rough  sketch  of  the  English 
advance. 


4 


50 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  I. 

The  Con¬ 
quest  of 
the  Saxon 
Shore. 

449-c.  500. 


that  countless  strifes  between  these  little  parties  and 
the  ealdormen  who  headed  them  broke  their  war 
against  the  British.1  From  the  size  of  the  later 
hundreds  we  may  perhaps  gather  that  the  conquerors 
settled  thickly  over  tine  soil,'  while  their  local  names 
lead  us  to  believe  that  offshoots  from  the  Saxon 
houses  who  were  conquering  on  the  Colne  joined 
the  Engle  in  their  attack  on  the  Gwent.3  The  very 
designations  of  Norfolk  and  Suffolk  tell  how  one 
folk  of  the  conquerors  fought  its  way  inland  from 
the  estuary  at  Yarmouth  up  the  valleys  of  the  Ouse, 
the  Wensum,  the  Yare,  and  the  Waveney  to  the 
northern  half  of  the  upland,  while  another  and  a 
lesser  folk  struck  up  from  the  common  mouth  of 
the  Orwell  and  the  Stour  to  the  southern  downs." 
Norwich,  no  doubt,  formed  the  central  settlement  of 

1  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  (ed.  Arnold),  p.  48.  “Ea  tempestate 
venerunt  multi  et  saepe  de  Germania,  et  occupaverunt  East-Angle 
et  Merce;  sed  necdum  sub  uno  rege  redacta  erant.  Plures  autem 
proceres  certatim  regiones  occupabant,  unde  innumerabilia  bella 
fiebant :  proceres  vero,  quia  multi  erant,  nomine  carent.” 

2  One  Norfolk  hundred,  that  of  Humbleyard,  contains  less  than 
23,000  acres,  or  less  than  many  single  townships  in  Yorkshire  or 
Lancashire. 

3  See  lists  in  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  i.  456,  etc. 

4  Flor.  Wore.  ed.  Thorpe  (i.  260),  in  one  of  the  appendices  to  his 
work,  fixes  approximately  the  date  of  this  conquest :  “  Regno  poste- 
rius  Cant-wariorum,  et  prius  regno  Occidentalium  Saxonum,  exor- 
tum  est  regnum  Orientalium  Anglorum,”  i.  e.  its  “  kingdom  ”  was 
set  up  between  455  and  519.  Bseda,  speaking  of  Raedwald,  who 
was  king  of  the  East  Angles  at  the  close  of  the  sixth  century,  calls 
him  “filius  Tytili,  cujus  pater  fuit  Vuffa,  a  quo  reges  Orientalium 
Anglorum  Vuffingas  appellant”  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15).  If  Uffa  was  the 
first  king,  the  beginning  of  the  kingdom  cannot  be  thrown  much 
further  back  than  the  latter  date  of  519;  and  as  we  must  allow  for 
a  period  of  isolated  conquests  and  anarchy  before  this  date,  the  first 
descents  of  the  East  Engle  cannot  be  far  from  the  time  at  which  we 
have  placed  them. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


51 


the  one  folk,  as  Sudbury  may  have  formed  that  of  chap.  i. 
the  other ;  and  though  there  are  enough  common  The  con- 
names  among  each  to  show  what  their  after-history  the  Saxon 
implies — that  there  was  no  deep  severance  between  sh^®- 
them— the  far  greater  number  of  local  designations449^500- 
which  are  peculiar  to  either  district1  points  to  a  real 
individuality  in  the  “  folks  ”  who  conquered  them. 

From  the  downs  the  conquerors  again  pushed  inland 
to  the  flats  at  their  feet,  and  the  vale  of  the  little 
Ouse  was  included  in  their  territory.  But  they  can¬ 
not  have  been  vigorous  assailants  of  the  towns  about 
the  Wash,  if  the  rampart  which  runs  across  New¬ 
market  Heath  from  Rech  to  Cowledge  was,  as  is 
possible,  their  work.2  The  Devils  Dyke,  as  this 
barrier  is  called,  is  clearly  a  work  of  defence  against 
enemies  advancing  from  the  Fens;  and  as  a  defence 
to  the  East  Anglians  it  was  of  priceless  value,  for, 
stretching  as  it  did  from  a  point  where  the  country 
became  fenny  and  impassable  to  a  point  where  the 
woods  equally  forbade  all  access,  it  covered  the  only 
entrance  into  the  country  they  had  won.  But  if  the 
dyke  be  a  work  of  the  conquerors  of  this  part  of  the 
coast,  its  purely  defensive  character  shows  that  their 
attack  was  at  an  end ;  and  that  it  was  rather  as  as¬ 
sailants  than  as  a  prey  that  they  regarded  the  towns 
of  Central  Britain. 

But  even  if  the  invaders  were  forced  to  halt  at s/f‘,xon 
this  stage  of  their  advance,  they  were  now  firmly  quered. 


1  See  the  lists  in  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  vol.  i.  p.  456. 

2  Its  ditch  faces  towards  Cambridgeshire  and  the  Fens  (Camden’s 
Britannia,  1753,  vol.  i.  p.  487).  It  was  the  boundary  of  the  kingdom 
as  well  as  of  the  diocese  of  East  Anglia.  The  name  is  probably  a 
Christian  version  of  Woden’s  Dyke,  or  Wansdyke. 


52 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chat.  i.  planted  on  British  soil.  With  the  settlement  of 
The  con-  East  Anglia  the  conquest  of  the  Saxon  Shore  was 
the  Saxon  complete,  and  the  whole  coast  of  Britain  from  the 
shore.  \yash  to  Southampton  Water  was  in  the  hands  of 
449-c. sop,  the  invader.  Its  fortresses  were  broken  down.  Its 
towns  were  burned  and  desolate.  A  new  people 
was  planted  on  its  soil.  Even  if  we  look  on  the 
dates  given  by  English  tradition  as  at  best  approxi¬ 
mations  to  the  truth,  they  can  hardly  be  wrong  when 
they  point  out  this  district  as  having  been  the  first 
to  be  won,  and  as  having  taken  long  years  in  the 
winning.  It  is,  indeed,  the  slow  progress  of  the  in¬ 
vaders,  and  the  bitterness  which  would  naturally 
spring  from  so  protracted  a  struggle,  that  best  ac¬ 
counts  for  the  differences  which  even  a  casual  ex¬ 
amination  of  the  map  discloses  between  the  settle¬ 
ment  of  the  conquerors  here  and  their  settlement  in 
Central  or  Northern  Britain  ;  for  nowhere  is  the  Eng¬ 
lish  settlement  so  thick,  nowhere  do  we  find  the 
tribal  houses  so  crowded  on  the  soil,  or  the  hun¬ 
dreds,  in  which  the  settlers  grouped  themselves,  so 
small  and  so  thickly  clustered.1 


1  Kemble,  in  his  Saxons  in  England,  pointed  out  that  the  hun¬ 
dreds  along  the  coast — which  he  regarded  as  representing  the  set¬ 
tlements  of  the  free  settlers — were  smaller  and  thicker  than  those 
of  the  interior ;  and  as  regards  the  Saxon  Shore,  this  is  true  enough. 
Elsewhere  it  does  not  apply  in  the  same  degree ;  and  Professor 
Stubbs  urges  that  “  Gloucester  and  Wiltshire  are  as  minutely  sub¬ 
divided  as  Devonshire  and  Dorsetshire”  (Const.  Hist.  i.  113,  note). 
But  this  hardly  tells  against  the  identification  of  the  smaller  hun¬ 
dreds  with  the  earlier  settlements — as  Devon  and  Dorset  are,  like 
Gloucestershire,  among  later  conquests — or  against  the  truth  of 
Kemble’s  statement  if  it  be  restricted  to  the  Saxon  Shore. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


53 


CHAPTER  II. 

CONQUESTS  OF  THE  ENGLE. 
c.  500-c.  570. 

To  the  province  the  loss  of  the  Saxon  Shore  must 
have  been  a  terrible  loss ;  for  with  its  conquest 
Britain  was  cut  off  from  the  continent,  she  was 
isolated  from  the  rest  of  the  civilized  world,  and  a 
fresh  impulse  must  have  been  given  to  the  anarchy 
that  had  begun  in  the  strife  of  her  Romanized  and 
Celtic  populations.  But  greatly  as  it  might  weaken 
Britain,  the  loss  of  this  tract  was  far  from  throwing 
her  open  to  the  invaders.  We  have  seen  what  bar¬ 
riers  held  back  the  Jute  of  Kent,  and  the  Saxon  on 
either  side  of  him ;  but  barriers  as  impassable  held 
back  the  Engle  of  the  Eastern  Gwent,  for  the  forest 
line  which  bernm  011  the  Thames  reached  on  alon^ 

o  o 

their  western  frontier  to  the  Wash,  and  the  Wash 
stretched  to  the  northward  from  Newmarket  to  the 
sea.  The  Fens,  which  occupied  this  huge  break  in 
the  eastern  coast  of  Britain,  covered  in  the  sixth 
century  a  far  larger  space  than  now for  while  they 
stretched  northward  up  the  Witham  almost  as  far 
as  Lincoln,  and  southward  up  the  Cam  as  far  as 
Cambridge,  they  reached  inland  to  Huntingdon  and 
Stamford,  and  the  road  between  those  places  skirted 

1  Pearson's  Historical  Maps  of  England,  p.  3;  and  map  of  Bri¬ 
tannia  Romana. 


Barriers 
of  Britain, 


54 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  ii.  their  bounds  to  the  west.  So  vast  a  reach  of  tangled 

-  O 

conquests  marsh  offered  few  temptations  to  an  invader ;  and  we 
Engie.  shall  see  grounds  at  a  later  time  for  believing  that  the 
c.^oo-  Gyrwas,  as  the  Engle  freebooters  who  found  a  home 
e.j>70.  in  its  islands  called  themselves,  were  for  a  long  time 
too  weak  to  break  through  the  line  of  towns  that 
guarded  its  inner  border. 

Conquest  Had  the  invaders  pushed  inland  only  from  this 

of  Lindsey.  A 

quarter,  therefore,  the  resistance  of  the  Britons  might 
have  succeeded  in  prisoning  them  within  the  bounds 
of  the  Saxon  Shore,  as  that  of  Gaul  at  a  later  day 
prisoned  the  Northmen  within  the  bounds  of  Nor¬ 
mandy.  But  the  sixth  century  can  hardly  have  been 
long  begun  when  each  of  the  two  peoples  who  had 
done  the  main  work  of  conquest  opened  a  fresh  at¬ 
tack  on  the  flanks  of  the  tract  they  had  won.  On 
its  western  flank,  as  we  shall  see,  the  Saxons  appeared 
in  the  Southampton  Water.  On  its  northern  flank 
the  Engle  appeared  in  the  estuaries  of  the  Forth 
and  of  the  Humber.  To  the  south  of  this  last  great 
opening  in  the  coast  the  oolitic  range  that  stretch¬ 
es  across  Mid-Britain  from  the  Cotswolds  through 
Northamptonshire  abuts  on  the  waters  of  the  river- 
mouth  ;  while  to  the  east  of  the  oolites,  across  the 
muddy  stream  of  the  Ancholme,  rises  a  parallel  line 
of  chalk  heights,  cut  off  from  the  chalk  upland  of 
East  Anglia  by  the  Wash.  As  it  extends  to  the 
south  the  oolitic  range  is  broken  by  a  deep  depres¬ 
sion  through  which  the  Witham  makes  its  way  to 
the  Wash ;  and  to  the  south  of  the  Witham,  over 
the  country  which  is  now  known  as  Kesteven,'  a 

1  Camden.  Britannia  (ed.  1753),  vol.  i.  p.  554.  See  Camden's  map 
of  Lincolnshire. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


55 


mass  of  dense  woodland  stretched  from  the  fen-  chap,  h. 
country  about  Boston  across  the  heights  into  the  conquests 
basin  of  the  Trent.  The  two  uplands,  however,  yn^e 
which  lay  to  the  north  of  this  wold  tract  formed  c  5^0 
even  then  a  populous  and  fertile  part  of  Britain.  c-  57°- 
Roman  industry  had  begun  the  work  of  draining 
its  marshes ;  its  long  reaches  of  heath  were  already 
broken  with  farms  and  homesteads ;  and  the  houses 
which  lay  dotted  over  the  country  side  show  by  the 
character  of  their  ruins  that  its  landowners  were 
men  of  wealth  and  culture.  The  Ermine  Street 
from  the  south  struck  like  an  arrow  from  Stamford 
through  the  woods  of  Kesteven  along  the  crest  of 
the  heights,  to  drop  suddenly  into  the  valley  of  the 
Witham  as  it  breaks  through  them ;  and,  uniting 
with  the  Fosse  Road  from  the  Trent  valley  as  it 
crossed  the  river,  again  climbed  the  steep  slope  on 
the  other  side  of  the  gap,  over  which  streams  now¬ 
adays,  in  picturesque  confusion,  the  modern  city  of 
Lincoln.  At  the  edge  of  the  table-land  to  which 
this  ascent  leads,  on  a  site  marked  by  the  minster 
and  castle  that  now  tower  over  the  city,  stood  the 
square  fortress  of  the  first  Roman  Lindum  ;  and 
through  this  earlier  town  the  road  struck  by  the 
Portway  Gate,  which  is  still  left  to  us,  straight  on¬ 
ward  to  the  upland  without  its  walls.  Here,  as  else¬ 
where,  however,  the  growth  of  the  place  had  brought 
about  an  extension  of  its  defences ;  a  fortified  sub¬ 
urb  spread  down  the  hill  in  the  line  of  the  modern 
Lincoln  to  the  stream  which  even  then  furnished 
an  important  inlet  for  the  coasting  trade  of  Central 
Britain ;  and  since  the  close  of  the  Roman  rule  the 
citizens  seemed  to  have  striven  to  strengthen  their 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


56 

chap.  11.  walls  by  raising  a  line  of  earthworks  to  the  north  of 
conquests  the  town,1  But  growth  and  commerce  were  alike 
rngle9  brought  to  an  end  by  the  storm  which  fell  on  them ; 
c  ^0-  an<^  town  and  suburb  must  have  been  left  a  heap  of 
c.  570.  ruins  while  their  conquerors  spread  over  the  deserted 
country  north  of  the  Witham,  and  settled  down  in 
croft  and  homestead  as  the  Lindiswara,  the  11  dwellers 
about  Lindum.”2 

The  The  conquest  of  Lindsey,  however,  brought  the 
Y°Wo!dsre  Engle  little  save  plunder.  The  estuary  of  the  Hum¬ 
ber,  with  a  huge  swamp  that  spread  along  the  bed 
of  the  lower  Trent,  and  of  which  a  portion  remains 
in  the  Isle  of  Axholme,  girt  these  uplands  in  on  the 
north  and  northwest;  while  over  the  whole  of  the 
modern  shire  south  of  the  Witham,  from  Lincoln  to 
Stamford,  stVetched  the  thick  woods  of  Kesteven, 
and  the  Holland  of  the  Fens.  It  was  only  along  the 
Fosse  Road  from  Lincoln  to  Newark  that  the  country 
was  open  for  an  advance  ;  and  along  this  the  Lindis¬ 
wara  may  have  crept  slowly  to  the  Trent.  But  it 
was  the  effort  of  another  tribe  of  conquerors  that 
brought  the  Engle  fairly  into  the  heart  of  Britain. 
While  the  assailants  of  Lindsey  had  been  striking 
from  the  Humber  over  the  heights  and  wolds  on  the 
south  of  its  estuary,  other  Engle  adventurers  must 
have  been  seizing  the  flat  promontory  or  naze  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Humber,  to  which  they  gave  the  name 
of  Holderness.  Fertile  as  drainage  has  now  made 


1  See  G.  T.  Clark,  “  Lincoln  Castle,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxxiii.  213  ; 
Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  212. 

5  We  have  no  means  of  dating  the  settlement  of  the  Lindiswara ; 
but  we  can  hardly  be  wrong  in  placing  it  between  that  of  the  East 
Engle  and  the  Deirans. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


57 


this  district,  it  can  then  have  been  little  more  than  a  chap.  ”• 
narrow  line  of  mud  flats,  which  offered  small  temp-  conquests 
tation  for  settlement.  But  across  the  stream  of  the  Engfee 
Hull,  in  whose  marshy  and  desolate  channels  men  c~^0_ 
hunted  the  beaver  which  gave  its  name  to  our  Bev-  c-  57°- 
erley,  the  ground  rises  gently  to  a  crescent  of  chalk 


downs,  the  wolds  that  run  from  the  Humber  by  Mar- 
ket-Weighton  to  the  cliffs  of  Flamborough  Head. 
Though  dykes  and  gravel  mounds  scar  their  surface, 
the  want  of  water  would  have  always  prevented  any 
settlement  on  these  wolds ;  they  must  have  been 
at  this  time  mere  sheepwalks,  as  they  remained  till 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


58 

chap^ii.  half  a  century  ago,  and  could  be  easily  overrun  by 

Conquests  the  invader.  The  wolds,  however,  were  hardly  mas- 
Engie.  tered  when  their  conquerors  looked  on  a  richer  and 
c.^joo-  more  tempting  country.  To  north  and  to  west  the 
c.5To.  chalk  heights  plunge  abruptly  down  steep  slopes  of 
scanty  turf  to  a  plain  at  their  feet,  through  which 
the  stream  of  the  Derwent  bends  from  its  rise  beside 
the  sea  on  the  east  to  pour  its  waters  into  the  Hum¬ 
ber.  The  springs  that  break  from  the  base  of  the 
cliffs  make  the  lower  Derwent  vale  a  rich  and  fertile 
country ;  and  here,  as  the  local  names  show,  the 
houses  of  the  conquerors — the  Deirans,  as  they  came 
to  call  themselves — were  thickly  planted.  The  dis¬ 
trict  about  Weighton  seems  to  have  been  chosen  as 
the  sacred  ground  of  their  settlement ;  and  a  temple 
of  their  gods  is  said  by  local  tradition  to  have  stood 
in  the  village  of  Goodmanham.1  On  the  north,  the 
narrower  space  of  the  upper  vale  forced  them  to  hug 
the  heights  more  closely ;  though  the  fall  of  Derven- 
tio,  which  lay  probably  on  the  site  of  Malton,  would 
open  to  them  the  country  round  it,  where  their  kings 
in  later  days  found  a  favorite  home.2  Holderness, 
the  wolds,  and  the  valley  of  the  Derwent  now  form 
the  East  Riding  of  Yorkshire;  and  it  is  likely 
enough  that  this  local  division  preserves,  however 
roughly,  the  boundaries  of  the  earlier  kingdom  of 
the  Deirans. 

Eboracum.  But  they  were  soon  drawn  onward.  Beyond  the 
green  meadows  at  the  feet  of  the  wolds  stretched 
away  to  the  westward  and  the  northward  one  of  the 
richest  and  most  fertile  regions  in  Britain.  Country- 

1  The  site  of  the  temple  was  shown  in  Bseda’s  day  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii. 

13).  2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


59 


houses  of  rich  landowners  studded  thickly  the  tract  CHAP-  ”• 
of  red  marls  that  spreads  along  the  Wharfe  and  the  conquests 
Ouse;  and  in  the  midst  of  this  level  stood  the  city  £1^? 
of  York,  or  Eboracum,1  once  the  capital  of  Britain.  c“^0 
The  town  lay  on  a  tongue  of  land  between  the  broad  c-  57°- 
channel  of  the  Ouse  and  the  bed  of  a  lesser  stream, 
the  Fosse,  which  came  through  a  marshy  and  difficult 
country  from  the  woodlands  beneath  the  wolds.  To 
the  military  importance  and  strength  of  its  position 
was  doubtless  due  the  existence  of  the  camp  whose 
limits  are  still  marked  by  the  small  square  of  mas¬ 
sive  walls  that  enclosed  in  Trajan’s  day  the  earlier 
Roman  city.2  But  the  town  soon  overleaped  these 
bounds.  Placed  as  it  was  at  the  head  of  the  tidal 
waters  of  the  Ouse,  and  forming  the  natural  centre  of 
Northern  Britain,  it  became  under  Severus  the  seat 
of  the  provincial  government  and  the  headquarters 
of  the  force  which  guarded  Britain  against  the  Piets. 

Before  the  close  of  the  Roman  rule,  it  covered  the 
whole  area  of  the  modern  city  on  either  side  of  the 
Ouse,  while  beyond  it  lay  suburbs  a  mile  in  length 


1  Phillips  (Archaeol.  Journal,  vol.  x.  p.  183)  infers  from  a  study  of 
roads,  etc.,  that  “  Eboracum  was  not  situated  on  the  earliest  track 
of  the  middle  road  to  the  north.  That  track,  in  fact,  went  from  near 
Tadcaster  to  Aldborough,  leaving  York  ten  miles  to  the  right.  But 
at  the  epoch  of  the  Antonine  Itinerary  the  direct  route  was  aban¬ 
doned,  and  the  deviation  through  Eboracum  substituted.”  Free¬ 
man,  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  202,  and  Raine,  Historians  of  the  Church 
of  York,  i.  praef.  (Rolls  series),  throw  light  on  the  early  topography 
of  York,  whose  Roman  antiquities  may  be  studied  in  the  Ebora¬ 
cum  of  Drake  and  the  Eburacum  of  Wellbeloved. 

2  A  broken  tablet  in  the  York  Museum,  which  tells  of  work  done  ' 
by  the  ninth  legion  in  Trajan's  day,  is  the  earliest  monument  of 
Eboracum.  Another,  of  a  Decurio,  shows  the  form  taken  by  its 
municipal  administration. 


6o 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  ii.  and  roads  lined  with  tombs.1  As  the  dwelling-place 
conquests  of  the  Cmsar  Constantius,  York  became  for  a  while 
Engle6  one  °f  the  Imperial  cities  of  the  Empire.  It  was  yet 
c  500-  more  illustrious  as  the  birthplace  of  Constantine,  and 
c-  570.  as  the  spot  from  which  he  started  on  that  wonderful 
career  which  changed  the  face  of  the  world.  The 
work  of  Constantine  left  its  traces  on  Eboracum,  as 
on  the  rest  of  the  Empire ;  its  bishop  took  his  place 
beside  the  Imperial  vicar;  and  the  shrines  of  Sera- 
pis  and  Mithras,  which  were  frequent  in  the  older 
city,  were  superseded  by  a  Christian  basilica.  With 
the  departure  of  the  Roman  administration,  however, 
and  with  the  inroads  of  the  Piet,  the  glory  of  the  city 
passed  away ;  but  it  remained  a  strong  and  wealthy 
place — the  head,  it  may  be,  of  a  confederacy  of  the 
neighboring  cities  to  which  its  high-roads  led ;  and 
the  marks  of  its  greatness  survived  in  the  lofty  walls2 * * 5 


1  The  wealthier  class  of  burghers  and  officials  are  found  buried 
along  the  road  to  Calcaria  or  Tadcaster.  It  is  from  these  tombs 
that  the  relics  of  Roman  life  preserved  at  York  have  mostly  been 
drawn,  fragments  of  the  fine  Samian  ware  brought  for  rich  citizens’ 
use  from  the  Continent,  curious  egg-shell  pottery,  vases  and  cups 
from  a  woman’s  toilet-case,  sepulchral  figures  of  soldiers  and  citi¬ 
zens,  and  the  like.  On  the  right  bank  of  the  Ouse,  at  a  short  dis¬ 
tance  to  the  right  of  the  road  to  Calcaria,  was  discovered,  in  1873 
(Murray’s  Yorkshire,  p.  70),  a  “cemetery  for  a  poorer  class  than  that 
which  raised  its  monuments  nearer  to  the  great  road,  and  for  some 
distance  along  its  course.  In  some  parts  of  the  ground  Roman 
carters  had  been  in  the  habit  of  shooting  rubbish  from  the  neigh¬ 
boring  city.  There  were  thick  strata  of  Roman  bricks,  mortar,  and 

potter}',  mingled  with  fragments  of  wall  plaster,  on  which  colored 
patterns  were  distinct.  Adjoining  this  rougher  portion  of  the  cem¬ 
etery  two  or  three  deep  pits,  or  putei,  were  found,  into  which,  as  was 
usual,  the  bodies  of  slaves  had  been  thrown  carelessly  and  pell- 

mell,  as  was  evident  from  the  confused  mass  of  bones  in  all  possible 

positions.” 

5  One  noble  fragment  of  its  wall  survives  in  a  bastion,  cased  with 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


6l 

and  towers  which  awed  Alcuin  two  centuries  later,  chap.  h. 
as  well  as  in  the  “  proofs  of  Roman  refinement  ”  that  conquests 
were  still  visible  in  the  days  of  William  of  Malmes-  Engie. 

bury-'  .  c.^oo- 

In  the  century  that  had  passed  since  the  close  of  c-  57°- 
the  Roman  rule,  York  had  probably  felt  the  need  of  conquest 
additional  defence ;  and  modern  inquiry  has  detect-  Yorkshire, 
ed  the  work  of  its  citizens  in  the  mound  of  earth 
which  encloses  the  modern  city  and  which  serves  as 
a  base  for  its  later  wall.* 1 2  But  the  effort  proved  a 
fruitless  one,  and  after  a  struggle  whose  incidents 
are  lost  for  us,  the  town,  like  its  neighbor  cities,  lay 
a  desolate  ruin,  while  its  conquerors  spread,  slaying 
and  burning,  along  the  valley  of  the  Ouse.3  Along 
its  southern  course,  indeed,  there  was  little  worth  the 
winning.  The  moorlands  that  lie  close  to  York  on 
the  west  run  onward  to  the  Peak  of  Derbyshire  in 
a  wild  region  of  tumbled  hills,  traversed  but  by  a  few 
pack-roads,4  a  region  which  formed  a  British  king¬ 
dom  that  for  a  hundred  years  to  come  defied  the 
arms  of  the  invaders  ;5  and  though  these  moorlands 


neat  masonry  of  small  ashlar  blocks,  which  are  broken  by  a  line  of 
red  brick.  The  tower  is  embowered  nowadays  in  greenery,  and 
gay  with  flowers.  From  its  base  the  ground  falls  in  steep  slopes  to 
the  river,  lying  deep  in  what  is  still  a  green  ravine.  This  tower 
stood  at  the  southwest  angle  of  the  Roman  city. 

1  Raine,  Historians  of  the  Church  of  York,  i.  praef.  xiii.,  who  adds, 
“In  no  other  Roman  city  in  Britain  have  remains  of  equal  number 
and  importance  been  discovered  ”  (xv.). 

2  G.  T.  Clark,  “The  Defences  of  York,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  vol. 
xxxi.  p.  232. 

5  “  Every  Roman  station  and  house  in  the  north  shows  traces  of 
having  been  destroyed  by  fire”  (Raine,  Historians  of  the  Church 
of  York,  i.  praef.  xvii.). 

4  Phillips  traces  and  examines  these.  Archaeol.  Journal,  vol. x.  p.  181. 

5  This  district  answers  roughly  to  the  present  West  Riding. 


62 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^ii.  of  Elmet  sheer  away  from  the  Ouse  as  it  passes  to 
conquests  the  Humber,  the  broadening  level  which  stretched 
EngL0  along  its  lower  course,  as  along  the  lower  channels 
c~_  of  the  Wharfe,  the  Aire,  and  the  Don  that  come 
c.j>70.  down  to  it  from  the  moors,  was  then  a  wild  waste  of 
oak  forest  and  fen.1 2  Through  this  tract,  in  the  nar¬ 
row  strip  of  open  tillage  between  the  marshes  and 
the  edge  of  Elmet,  ran  the  one  road  which  led  from 
Central  Britain  to  the  plain  of  York,  crossing  the 
Don  at  Doncaster  and  its  two  fellow-rivers  at  Cas- 
tleford  and  at  Tadcaster,  where  it  bent  sharply  aside 
to  Eboracum.  The  fall  of  these  cities  must  have 
accompanied  the  conquest  of  this  district,  but  the 
towns  seem  to  have  been  small,  and,  save  at  Calcaria, 
the  country  would  furnish  small  room  for  settlement. 
North  of  York,  as  the  road  crossed  the  Don  and 
struck  up  the  Swale  by  Catterick*  to  the  Tees,  a 
fairer  and  wider  tract  opened  before  the  invaders, 
and  the  peasants  of  Aldborough  show  on  the  floor¬ 
ing  of  their  cottages  mosaic  pavements  that  bear 
witness  to  the  luxury  and  refinement  which  passed 
away  in  the  wreck  of  Isurium.3  It  was  along  this 


1  This  was  the  district  of  Hatfield  Chase,  a  northern  outlier  of 
the  great  fen  through  which  the  Trent  made  its  way  to  the  Humber. 

2  Cataractonium  seems  from  its  remains  to  have  been  little  more 
than  a  small  walled  station,  from  which  the  northern  road  struck 
across  the  desolate  moors  to  the  wall,  while  a  side-track  ran  north¬ 
westward  to  Lavatrae,  or  Bowes,  in  Cumberland. 

3  Isurium  can  have  been  little  inferior  to  York  in  size  or  wealth. 
As  the  forest  of  Galtres  blocked  all  passage  eastward  of  the  Ouse, 
it  was  by  the  western  bank  of  the  river  that  the  main  road  struck 
to  the  north  across  the  lower  channel  of  the  Nidd  and  the  passage 
over  the  Ure  at  Isurium.  As  commanding  this  passage,  Isurium 
was  a  military  point  of  some  importance,  but  it  was  also  important 
as  the  point  of  junction  of  this  great  northern  main  road  with  a 
road  which  came  from  the  vale  of  Malton  and  Derwent  to  the  east, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

central  plain,  however,  that  the  Deirans  could  alone 
find  booty.  The  cliff-like  face  of  the  Hambleton 
Hills,  towering  over  a  forest* 1  that  extended  along  the 
Ouse  on  its  eastern  bank  just  above  York,  guarded 
moorlands  which  stretched  from  the  vale  of  Der¬ 
went  to  that  of  the  Tees ;  and  it  was  only  along  the 
little  stream-courses  which  ran  down  to  the  vale  of 
Pickering,  or  in  the  openings  which  break  the  line 
of  its  coast,  that  the  Engle  can  have  settled  in  the 
lonely  wilds  which  they  named  “  Cliff-land,”  or  Cleve¬ 
land.  Nor  can  their  settlements  have  been  thicker 
in  the  moorlands  that  fronted  them  on  the  north¬ 
west.  The  border  line  of  Yorkshire  still  marks  the 
furthest  bounds  to  which  they  drove  the  Britons  as 
they  won  their  way  up  Wharfedale,  or  traversed  the 
wide  dip  of  Ribblesdale,  or  pushed  across  broad  past¬ 
ures  and  through  primeval  woods  that  sheltered  the 


skirting  the  northern  edge  of  Galtres  forest,  along  the  slopes  of  the 
Hambleton  Hills,  as  with  a  second  which  came  directly  from  Tad- 
caster  and  the  south,  and  a  third  which  came  from  Ilkley  and  the 
western  moors.  The  rude  masses  of  gritstone,  some  twenty  feet 
high,  which  stand  in  the  fields  hard  by,  and  are  here  known  as  the 
“  Devil’s  Arrows,”  suggest  an  equal  importance  in  yet  earlier  ages, 
as  do  possibly  the  large  round  mounds  that  stand  outside  the  city 
walls,  and  one  of  which  still  remains.  From  the  existing  traces  of 
foundations,  the  city  must  have  been  a  closely  packed  mass  of  nar¬ 
row  lanes.  “Traces  of  fire,”  we  are  told,  “are  still  visible  on  parts 
of  the  walls.” 

1  The  later  forest  of  Galtres  formed  a  relic  of  this  woodland. 
Even  in  the  Middle  Ages  Galtres  extended  from  the  walls  of  York 
as  far  northward  as  Easingwold  and  Craik,  and  as  far  eastward  as 
Castle-Howard.  In  Leland’s  day  the  part  of  the  forest  between 
Castle-Hutton  and  York  was,  near  York  itself,  “  moorish  and  low 
ground,  and  having  little  wood,  in  the  other  part  higher  and  reason¬ 
ably  wooded.”  It  then  abounded  in  wild  deer.  So  lonely  was  the 
waste  north  of  York  that  travellers  often  lost  their  way  when  mak¬ 
ing  for  the  city. 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
C.  570. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
c.  570. 

The 

conquered 

Britons. 


64 

wolf  and  the  wild  white  oxen  over  the  gap  of  Stain- 
more  along  the  road  from  Catterick  to  Carlisle.1 2 

If  history  tells  us  nothing  of  the  victories  that  laid 
this  great  district  at  the  feet  of  its  conquerors,  the 
spade  of  the  archaeologist  has  done  somewhat  to  re¬ 
veal  the  ruin  and  misery  of  the  conquered  people. 
The  caves  of  the  Yorkshire  moorlands  preserve 
traces  of  the  miserable  fugitives  who  fled  to  them 
for  shelter.  Such  a  cave  opens  on  the  side  of  a 
lonely  ravine,  known  now  as  the  King’s  Scaur,  high 
up  in  the  moors  beside  Settled  In  primeval  ages  it 
had  been  a  haunt  of  hyenas,  who  dragged  thither  the 
mammoths,  the  reindeer,  the  bisons,  and  the  bears 
that  prowled  in  the  neighboring  glens.  At  a  later 
time  it  became  a  home  of  savages,  whose  stone  adzes 
and  flint  knives  and  bone  harpoons  are  still  embed¬ 
ded  in  its  floor.  But  these,  too,  vanished  in  their 
turn,  and  this  haunt  of  primitive  man  lay  lonely  and 
undisturbed  till  the  sword  of  the  English  invaders 
drove  the  Roman  provincials  for  shelter  to  the 
Moors.  The  hurry  of  their  flight  may  be  gathered 
from  the  relics  their  cave-life  has  left  behind  it. 
There  was  clearly  little  time  to  do  more  than  to 
drive  off  the  cattle,  the  swine,  the  goats,  whose  bones 


1  The  story  of  a  flight  of  an  “  Archbishop  Sampson  ”  from  York 
on  its  fall,  about  A.D.  500,  to  Brittany  is  simply  an  invention  of  the 
twelfth  century,  and  part  of  the  struggle  of  the  church  of  Dol 
against  the  claims  of  the  see  of  Tours  (Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Coun¬ 
cils  of  Great  Britain,  i.  149,  note).  But  the  date  of  the  fall  of  York 
may  be  fairly  accurate.  The  first  king  of  the  Deirans  was  /EWa,  the 
son  of  Yffi,  whose  reign  began  in  559  (Flor.  Wore.  ed.  Thorpe,  i. 
268) ;  and  we  may  therefore  probably  date  their  invasion  as  going 
on  during  the  forty  or  fifty  years  before  that  time. 

2  Boyd  Dawkins,  Cave  -  hunting,  pp.  81-125,  has  given  a  full  ac¬ 
count  of  the  series  of  remains  found  in  this  cave. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


65 

lie  scattered  round  the  hearth  fire  at  the  mouth  of 
the  cave,  where  they  served  the  wretched  fugitives 
for  food.  The  women  must  have  buckled  hastily 
their  brooches  of  bronze  or  party-colored  enamel, 
the  peculiar  workmanship  of  Celtic  Britain,  and 
snatched  up  a  few  household  implements  as  they 
hurried  away.  The  men,  no  doubt,  girded  on  as 
hastily  the  swords  whose  dainty  sword-hilts  of  ivory 
and  bronze  still  remain  to  tell  the  tale  of  their  doom, 
and,  hiding  in  their  breast  what  money  the  house 
contained,  from  coins  of  Trajan  to  the  wretched 
“minims”  that  told  of  the  Empire’s  decay,  mounted 
their  horses  to  protect  their  flight.  At  nightfall  all 
were  croudring  beneath  the  dripping  roof  of  the  cave, 
or  round  the  fire  that  was  blazing  at  its  mouth,  and 
a  long  suffering  began  in  which  the  fugitives  lost 
year  by  year  the  memory  of  the  civilization  from 
which  they  came.  A  few  charred  bones  show  how- 
hunger  drove  them  to  slay  their  horses  for  food ; 
reddened  pebbles  mark  the  hour  when  the  new  ves¬ 
sels  they  wrought  were  too  weak  to  stand  the  fire, 
and  their  meal  was  cooked  by  dropping  heated 
stones  into  the  pot.  A  time  seems  to  have  come 
when  their  very  spindles  were  exhausted,  and  the 
women  who  wove  in  that  dark  retreat  made  spindle 
whorls  as  they  could  from  the  bones  that  lay  about 
them. 

While  the  Engle  were  thus  mastering  the  future 
Yorkshire  from  the  estuary  of  the  Humber,  they 
were  making  an  even  more  important  settlement  in 
the  estuary  of  the  Forth.  No  district  of  Britain  had 
been  the  scene  of  so  long  a  conflict  as  the  country 
between  the  Firth  of  Forth  and  the  Tyne.  Through- 

5 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
c.  51V. 


Northern 

Britain. 


66 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  ii.  out  the  period  of  the  Roman  rule,  this  border  had 
Conquests  been  a  battle-ground.  The  Roman  conquest  of 
Engle6  Southern  Britain,  indeed,  was  hardly  completed  when 
c^oo-  the  Pressure  °f  the  unconquered  tribes  to  the  north 
C.5T0.  forced  Hadrian  to  guard  the  province  by  a  barrier 
drawn  right  across  this  tract  of  country.1  A  massive 
wall,  backed  to  the  south  by  an  earthen  rampart  and 
a  ditch,  and  strengthened  by  military  stations  and 
watch-towers  along  its  course,  stretched  for  seventy 
miles  across  the  wild  moorlands  between  the  thin 
strips  of  cultivated  ground  which  then  lined  the 
mouth  of  the  Solway  or  the  Tyne.  Nothing  gives  a 
livelier  picture  of  Roman  Britain  on  its  military  side 
than  the  remains  of  this  wall  and  the  monuments  we 
find  among  its  ruins.  With  the  departure,  however, 
of  the  legion  that  garrisoned  this  barrier,  its  whole 
line  must  have  been  left  desolate.  The  towns  in  its 
course  were  merely  military  stations,  which  could 
contribute  nothing  to  its  defence  when  the  garrison 
was  withdrawn,  and  which  would  be  left  as  deserted 
as  the  wall  itself.  The  ground  which  it  traversed, 
indeed,  was,  for  the  most  part,  a  waste  that  could 
furnish  few  supplies  for  its  inhabitants ;  and  the 
troops  and  camp-followers  who  held  the  barrier 
must  have  been  provided  with  food  and  supplies 
from  the  headquarters  at  Eboracum.  Even  had  a 
national  force  been  ready  to  take  the  place  of  the 
legions,  the  maintenance  of  such  a  garrison  involved 
an  organization  and  expense  which  can  hardly  have 
been  possible  for  the  broken  province ;  and  the 
great  barrier  probably  sank  at  once  into  solitude 

1  Dr.  Collingwood  Bruce  has  summed  up  all  we  know  of  this  bar¬ 
rier  in  his  volume  on  The  Roman  Wall. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  57 

and  ruin,  while  the  Piets  poured  unmolested  into  the  chap. Ir- 
country  which  it  guarded.  Marks  of  their  havoc  conquests 
may  perhaps  still  be  traced  in  the  station  that  occu-  ^gi® 
pied  the  site  of  Maryport  to  the  south  of  Carlisle,  c~ 
amidst  whose  ruins  we  find  a  tower -gate  broken  c-  57°- 
down  by  violence,  and  the  houses  of  its  main  street 


charred  with  fire.1  Further  south  at  Ribchester,  on 
the  Ribble,  among  the  burnt  wreck  of  the  town, 
have  been  found  skeletons  of  men  who  may  have 
made  their  last  stand  against  the  savage  marauders. 

Raids  such  as  those  of  the  Piets,  however,  destruc- 


NORTH  BRITAIN. 

British  names  Bryneich 

Roman  ,,  EBORACUM 

English  .1  EOFORW/C 

Modem  ,1  York 

English  Miles 
0  5  10  20  30  40 


Tyne 


1  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  p.  452. 


68 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


char  ii.  tive  as  they  must  have  been,  were  but  passing  inci- 
Conqnests  dents  in  the  life  of  Northern  Britain;  for,  like  the 
Engie.  later  Highlander,  the  Piet  seems  to  have  gathered 
c.  500-  booty  only  to  withdraw  with  it  to  his  native  hills  ; 
c-  57°-  and  on  the  western  coast,  which  was  mainly  subject 
The  Engie  to  their  incursions,  the  Britons  maintained  their  polit- 
Northern  ical  existence  for  centuries  to  come.  A  far  greater 
bntam.  c}iange  was  wrought  by  the  marauders  who  assailed 
this  region  from  its  eastern  coast.  It  is  possible  that 
descents  from  North  Germany  had  long  since  plant¬ 
ed  Frisian  settlers  in  the  valley  of  the  Tweed,  and 
that  it  is  to  their  descents  that  the  Firth  of  Forth 
owed  its  early  name  of  the  Frisian  Sea.1  If  this  were 
so,  Northumbria  on  either  side  of  the  Cheviots  can¬ 
not  have  been  strange  to  the  German  freebooters ; 
and  the  withdrawal  of  the  legionaries  would  soon  be 
followed  by  their  appearance  off  its  coasts.  But  it 
is  not  till  long  after  this  time  that  we  catch  any  his¬ 
torical  glimpses  of  English  attack.2 3  Through  the 
dim  haze  of  northern  tradition,  we  see  a  chieftain  ' 


1  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  191.  Nennius  calls  it  Mare  Freisicum, 

cap.  38. 

3  Nennius,  sec.  56,  57.  Nennius  says  that  after  Hengest's  death, 
his  son  Octa  passed  from  this  district  into  Kent.  There  is  nothing 
impossible  in  a  Jutish  attack  on  this  coast  at  this  early  date;  and 
it  receives  some  support  from  Malmesbury,  Gesta  Regum,  ed.  Har¬ 
dy,  i.  p.  61,  “annis  enim  uno  minus  centum  Nordhanhimbri  duces 
communi  habitu  contenti,  sub  imperio  Cantuaritarum  privatos  age- 
bant,”  till  Ida’s  choice  as  king,  in  547. 

3  Nennius,  sec.  56.  This  is  the  Arthur  so  famous  afterwards  in 
romance.  Mr.  Skene,  who  has  done  much  to  elucidate  these  early 
struggles,  has  identified  the  sites  of  these  battles  with  spots  in  the 
north  (see  his  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  1 53-1 54,  and  more  at  large  his 
Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales,  i.  51-58);  but  as  Dr.  Guest  has 
equally  identified  them  with  districts  in  the  south,  the  matter  must 
still  be  looked  upon  as  somewhat  doubtful. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


69 

struggling  in  battle  after  battle  at  the  opening  of  chap.  li¬ 
the  sixth  century  against  invaders  whose  earlier  conquests 
raids  reached  to  the  Lennox,  but  who  are  gradually 
held  at  bay  within  the  basin  of  the  Tweed.  Here,  c^0_ 
however,  they  seem,  by  the  midst  of  the  sixth  century,  c-  5?o. 
to  have  made  themselves  masters  of  the  ground. 

Along  Lothian,  or  the  coast  between  Lammermoor 
and  the  Forth,  they  had  pushed  to  the  little  stream 
of  the  Esk,  where  their  way  was  barred  by  the  rock- 
fortress  of  Myned  Agned,  the  site  of  the  later  Edin¬ 
burgh  ;  while  south  of  the  Lammermoor  they  had  ad¬ 
vanced  along  the  loops  of  the  Tweed  as  far  as  the 
vale  of  the  Gala  Water,  and  up  the  dales  and  stream¬ 
lets  which  lie  to  the  south  and  to  the  north  of  it,  till 
their  advance  was  thrown  back  from  the  wilder  hill 
country  on  the  west.  Here  the  border  line  of  the 
Cattrail,1 2  as  it  strikes  through  Ettrick  Forest,  marks 
the  border  of  Welsh  and  Engle.  A  barrier  as  diffi¬ 
cult  curved  round  to  the  south  in  the  line  of  the 
Cheviots ;  but  between  the  extremity  of  this  range 
and  the  sea  a  thin  strip  of  coast  offered  an  open 
pathway  into  the  country  beyond  the  Tweed;  and 
Ida — “  the  Flame-bearer,”  as  the  Britons  called  him 
— a  chieftain  of  the  invaders,  whom  they  raised  in 
547  to  be  their  king,  seized  in  this  quarter  a  rock 
beside  the  shore,  and  established  a  base  for  further 
conquest  in  the  fortress  of  Bamborough/ 

1  See  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  162. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  547  (probably  from  the  short  chronicle  annexed  to 
Breda’s  History).  Bamborough,  it  tells  us,  was  first  enclosed  by  a 
hedge  or  stockade,  and  then  by  a  wall.  Nennius  (sec.  63)  says  that 
the  place  took  the  name  of  Bamborough  from  Bebbe,  the  wife  of 
Hithelfrith.  It  is  some  sixteen  miles  southeast  of  Berwick.  This 
setting-up  of  a  kingdom  under  Ida  is  our  only  certain  date  for  the 


70 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^ii.  In  these  earlier  conquests  of  the  Bernicians,  as 
conquests  Ida’s  folk  were  called,  the  settlement  was  as  com- 
Engie.  plete  as  in  the  rest  of  Britain.  Their  homes,  indeed, 
,,-goo-  must  have  been  scantily  sprinkled  over  the  wild  and 
c.j57o.  half-reclaimed  country ;  but,  scant  as  they  were,  these 
T/uir  “  hams  ”  and  “  tons  ”  told  as  plainly  as  in  other  dis- 
'  tricts  the  tale  of  English  colonization.  Dodings  and 
Livings  left  their  names  to  hamlets  like  Doddington 
and  Livingston ;  along  the  wild  coast  Tynings  and 
Coldings  made  their  fisher-villages  at  Tyningham 
and  Coldingham  ;  while  Elphinston  and  Edmonston 
preserve  the  memory  of  English  Elphins  and  Ed¬ 
monds  who  raised  their  homesteads  along  the  Teviot 
and  the  Tweed.  Nowhere,  indeed,  has  the  English 
tongue  been  preserved  in  greater  purity  than  in  the 
district  which  now  calls  itself  Southern  Scotland.* 1 2 
But  the  years  that  had  been  spent  in  winning  this 
little  tract  show  that  the  Bernician  force  was  but  a 
small  one ;  and  the  continued  slowness  of  their 
southward  advance  from  Bamborough  proves  that 
even  after  the  union  under  Ida  their  strength  was 
but  little  increased.  Aided  as  they  were  by  a  civil 
strife  which  was  breaking  the  strength  of  the  North¬ 
western  Britons,"  Ida  and  Ida’s  six  sons  had  to  battle 
along  the  coast  for  half  a  century  more  before  they 
could  drive  the  Welsh  over  the  western  moorlands, 


Bernician  settlement,  and  would  place  its  probable  beginning  at  a 
time  which  could  not  have  been  long  after  a.d.  500. 

1  See  Murray,  Northumbrian  English. 

2  Thus  Ida's  third  successor,  Hussa,  fought  against  four  British 
kings,  LTrbgen,  Riderchen,  Guallanc,  and  Morcant  (Geneal.  at  end 
of  Nennius).  These  petty  chieftains  show  how  the  country  was 
broken  up.  See  for  this  war,  Skene,  Four  Ancient  Books  of  Wales, 
i.  336  et  seq. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


71 


and  claim  for  their  own  the  little  valleys  of  the 
streams  which  fell  from  these  moors  to  the  sea 
through  the  modern  Northumberland.1 

From  the  wild  moors  of  Northumbria,  however,  we 
must  pass  southward  to  what  was  probably  a  yet 
later  scene  of  Engle  conquest  in  the  valley  of  the 
Trent.  Little  as  we  know  of  the  winning  of  the 
north,  we  know  less  of  the  winning  of  Central  Brit- 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
c.  570. 

The  valley 
of  the 
Trent. 


1  Our  knowledge  of  the  struggle  is  drawn  from  what  seems  to  be 
a  bit  of  genuine  Northumbrian  chronicle,  embedded  in  the  compila¬ 
tion  of  Nennius,  sec.  63.  The  strife  was  long  and  doubtful :  “  in  illo 
tempore  aliquando  hostes,  nunc  cives,  vincebantur.”  Ida  reigned 
till  559  (E.  Chron.  a.  5473. 


72 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
c.  570. 


ain;  and  not  a  single  record  has  been  left  of  the 
progress  of  the  peoples  whom  we  find  settled  at  the 
close  of  the  century  in  the  districts  of  our  Notting¬ 
ham,  our  Leicester,  and  our  Northampton,  or  on  the 
head -waters  of  the  Trent.  As  their  names  show, 
they  were  of  Engle  race,  and  we  shall,  at  a  later 
period  in  our  story,  find  reason  to  believe  that  their 
inroads  and  settlements  cannot  have  taken  place  at 
a  very  early  period  in  the  sixth  century.  There  was 
little,  indeed,  at  this  time  to  draw  invaders  to  Central 
Britain.  At  the  close  of  the  Roman  occupation,  the 
basin  of  the  Trent  remained  one  of  the  wildest  and 
least-frequented  parts  of  the  island.  The  lofty  and 
broken  moorlands  of  the  Peak,  in  which  the  Pennine 
range  as  it  runs  southward  from  the  Cheviots  at  last 
juts  into  the  heart  of  Britain,  were  fringed,  as  they 
sloped  to  the  plain,  by  a  semicircle  of  woodlands, 
round  the  edge  of  which  the  river  bent  closely  in 
the  curve  which  it  makes  from  its  springs  to  the 
Humber.  On  the  western  flank  of  the  moors  a 
forest  known  afterwards  as  Needwood  filled  up  the 
whole  space  between  the  Peak  and  the  Trent,  as  far 
as  our  Burton.  On  their  eastern  flank  the  forest 
of  Sherwood  stretched  from  the  outskirts  of  our 
Nottingham  to  a  huge  swamp  into  which  the  Trent 
widened  as  it  reached  the  Humber.  Here,  indeed, 
a  thin  line  of  clay  country  remained  open  on  the 
northern  bank  of  the  river,  but  elsewhere  it  was  only 
on  its  southern  bank  that  any  space  could  be  found 
for  human  settlement.  But  even  on  this  bank  such 
spaces  were  small  and  broken,  for  to  the  southwest 
the  moorlands  threw  an  outlier  across  the  river  in 
the  bleak  upland  of  Cannock  Chase,  which  stretched 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


73 


almost  to  the  verge  of  the  forest  of  Arden,  a  mighty  chap.  ii. 
woodland  that  rolled  away  far  over  Southern  Staf-  conquests 
fordshire  nearly  to  the  Cotswolds  ;  while  in  the  very 
centre  of  the  valley  they  threw  a  second  outlier  c~ 
across  the  Trent  in  the  rugged  fastnesses  of  Charn-  c-  57°- 
wood,  which  stretched  as  far  as  the  outskirts  of 
Leicester.  Even  the  open  oolitic  country  that  ex¬ 
tended  from  Charnwood  to  the  borders  of  Lincoln¬ 
shire  was  narrowly  bounded  to  the  south  by  the 
fastnesses  of  Rockingham  Forest,  which  occupied 
one  half  of  the  modern  shire  of  Northampton. 

It  was  in  this  tract,  along  the  southern  bank  of  the  Attack  on 

.  .  .  .  . ,  .  the  Trent 

river,  however,  that  settlement  was  most  possible,  as  vaitey. 
it  was  here  that  the  Trent  basin  was  first  accessible 
to  the  new  settlers.  While  the  bulk  of  the  Lindis- 
waras  were  slowly  pushing  their  way  through  the 
fastnesses  of  Kesteven  to  their  southern  border  on 
the  Witham  and  at  Stamford,  smaller  bodies  may 
well  have  been  descending  into  the  valley  of  the 
Trent.  From  Lindum,  indeed,  one  of  the  great 
lines  of  British  communication  led  straight  into  this 
district.  The  Fosse  Road,  as  it  crossed  Britain  from 
Ilchester  to  Lincoln,  following,  for  the  most  part,  the 
northern  slope  of  the  oolitic  range,  struck  by  Leices¬ 
ter  through  the  broken  country  to  the  south  of  the 
Trent  before  it  climbed  again  to  the  upland  at  Lin¬ 
dum.  If  they  marched  by  this  road  from  their  up¬ 
lands,  the  Lindiswara  would  touch  the  river  at  Farn- 
don,  a  village  not  far  from  the  later  Newark,  and  the 
name  of  the  station  which  occupied  this  site1  (Ad 

1  “Ad  Pontem”and  the  Tiowulfing-ceaster  which  succeeded  it 
(Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  lib.  ii.  c.  16)  have  been  identified  with  Newark, 
Southwell,  and  other  places.  It  seems  certainly  to  be  Farndon. 


74 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


char  ii.  Pontem,  or  Bridge  Road)  shows  that  a  bridge  here 
conquests  led  into  the  districts  across  it.  In  this  quarter,  how- 
Engie.  ever,  there  was  little  to  be  won.  On  the  rising 
0.-500-  ground  that  formed  the  outskirts  of  the  Peak,  along 
c.^570.  a  ]}ne  0f  Some  twenty  miles  from  our  Nottingham 
to  Worksop,  vast  masses  of  oak  and  birch,  broken 


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by  barren  reaches  of  heather,  formed  the  mighty 
Sherwood,  whose  relics  may  still  be  seen  in  the 
woods  of  Welbeck  or  Thoresby  or  Clumber,  and 
whose  memory  lingers  in  the  tale  of  Robin  Hood.' 
Between  forest  and  river  lay  but  a  thin  strip  of  open 

1  The  skirts  of  Sherwood  came  down  to  the  very  north  of  South- 
well  in  the  valley  of  the  Trent. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


75 


clay  land,  with  lifts  of  soft  sandstone  here  and  there 
along  the  banks  of  the  Trent;  and  on  the  slopes  of 
»  one  of  these  lifts,  whose  face  had  been  long  ago 
pierced  with  the  cave -dwellings  of  primeval  man, 
the  house  of  the  Snotingas  fixed  a  home  which  has 
grown  into  our  Nottingham.  But  the  main  settle¬ 
ment  of  the  conquerors  along  the  lower  Trent  must 
have  been  in  the  little  dales  that  break  the  pictur¬ 
esque  wold  country  that  lies  to  the  south  of  the 
river,  and  through  which  they  pushed  along  its 
course  as  far  as  its  junction  with  the  Soar. 

Here,  however,  their  course  may  have  been  barred 
for  a  while.  Behind  the  lower  course  of  the  Soar, 
from  the  neighborhood  of  Leicester  by  the  craggy 
hills  of  Mount  Sorrell,  and  past  Loughborough  to 
the  steep  rise  of  Castle  Donington  beside  the  Trent, 
lay  the  outliers  of  Charnwood,  a  rugged  tract  of 
granite  peaks  and  dark  woodlands  that  reached  west¬ 
ward  as  far  as  Ashby-de-la-Zouch,  a  tract  where — as 
the  later  legend  of  the  country-side  ran — “  a  squirrel 
might  hop  for  miles  from  tree  to  tree,  and  a  man 
journey  in  summer-time  from  Barden  Hill  to  Beau- 
manoir  without  once  seeing  the  sun.”  Only  a  few 
scattered  oaks  survive  of  the  forest  where  the  Prior 
of  Alverscroft  hunted  in  later  days  with  hawk  and 
hound,  or  where  Ascham  found  Lady  Jane  Grey 
busy  with  her  Plato ;  but  much  of  the  region  is  still 
a  wild  and  lonely  one,  and  recalls  the  great  fastness 
whose  front  may  have  held  the  Engle*  at  bay.  But 
if  their  advance  across  the  lower  Soar  was  barred, 


1  This  is,  however,  a  mere  inference  from  the  border  of  Notting¬ 
hamshire  in  this  quarter,  and  the  physical  character  of  the  country 
beyond  it. 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
c.  570. 


Rata 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


76 

chap^h.  the  Fosse  Road  by  which  they  had  descended  from 
conquests  the  Lincoln  heights  furnished  an  easy  road  to  a 
Engle6  richer  spoil.  Bending  southward  from  the  line  of 
c  500-  the  Trent,  it  passed  over  the  wolds  to  a  point  where 
c.jjto.  the  little  Wreak  joins  the  Soar,  and  then  struck 
along  the  Soar  to  Ratre.  Ratae,  the  predecessor  of 
our  Leicester,1  seems  to  have  been  the  largest  and 
most  important  town  in  Mid-Britain.  Fragments  of 
columns  and  capitals,  wine -jars  and  brooches,  with 
mosaic  pavements  from  villas  which  stood  without 
its  gates,  are  all  that  are  left  nowadays  of  its  glories ; 
though  the  basement  of  a  temple  of  Janus  was  still 
recognized  there  in  the  twelfth  century,2  and  a  big 
piece  of  ruined  masonry  may  preserve  the  memory 
of  the  wall  that  yielded  to  the  English  onset.  When 
its  capture  was  over,  the  site  of  the  town  lay  lonely 
and  deserted  in  the  midst  of  the  woodlands  through 
which  the  Soar,  even  in  the  Middle  Ages,  still  wound 
its  way  to  the  Trent;  and  the  only  trace  of  its  older 
life  lingers  on  in  the  name  of  Leicester,3  which  clung 
to  its  ruins  and  passed  to  the  town  that  rose  among 
them  as  well  as  to  the  shire  which  represents  the 
settlement  of  its  conquerors. 

cjy'-lu  The  winning  of  the  triangular  space  of  rock  and 
woodland  which  stretched  from  Ashby  to  the  Trent 
was  probably  the  latest  work  of  the  Middle  English, 
as  the  men  of  our  Leicestershire,  and  perhaps  our 

1  For  Ratae,  see  Thompson’s  English  Municipal  History,  p.  32, 
and  his  Handbook  to  Leicester.  A  large  number  of  Roman  re¬ 
mains  are  preserved  in  its  museum. 

2  By  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth  (Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and 
the  Saxon,  152,  note). 

3  “  Legoracensis  civitas”  (Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  iii.  129) 
in  eighth  century ;  Lege-ceaster  in  tenth. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


77 


Nottinghamshire,  came  to  be  called  but  we  cannot 
follow  them  as  they  spread  over  the  surface  of  their 
new  territory,  as  they  pushed  along  the  valley  of 
the  Wreak,  over  the  wolds  towards  Belvoir,  or  across 
the  marshes  of  the  Nar  to  the  fields  of  Market  Bos- 
worth,  or  by  the  upper  Soar,  here  shrunk  to  a  brook, 
from  Rate  along  the  Fosse  Road  to  the  borders  of 
the  great  forest  of  Arden.  Arden  was  a  barrier 
which,  no  doubt,  brought  the  invaders  for  a  while  to 
a  standstill.  But  along  the  upper  Soar  they  would 
push  easily  to  the  slopes  of  the  uplands  which  lay 
to  the  south  of  them,  and  where  other  Engle  con¬ 
querors  were  probably  already  at  work.  For,  diffi¬ 
cult  as  were  the  fastnesses  of  the  Wash,  the  Gyrwas, 
or  Fen-folk,  must  by  this  time  have  struggled  through 
them  to  sack  the  towns  which  lay  along  the  course 
of  the  road  that  marked  its  western  edge.  Of  these 
towns  the  northernmost  seems  to  have  occupied 
the  site  of  our  Ancaster,  amid  whose  “  great  square 
stones  of  old  buildings  ”  and  “  great  vaultes  ”  the 
ploughshare,  as  late  as  the  days  of  the  Tudors,  dis¬ 
closed  Roman  sepulchres  and  Roman  coins.1 2  South 
of  this,  on  a  site  marked  by  the  village  of  Caistor  on 
the  Nen,  stood  Durobrivae,  the  centre  of  a  district 
covered  with  potteries,  whose  kilns  were  dotted  over 


1  Baeda  gives  together  “  Orientales  Angli,  Mediterranei  Angli, 
Merci,  tota  Nordanhymbrorum  progenies,”  as  the  Engle  peoples  of 
Mid-Britain  (Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15),  “  Middle-Angli  id  est,  Mediterranei 
Angli”  (ibid.  iii.  21).  With  Diuma  began  the  bishopric  of  the 
Middle  Engle  (ibid.)  as  of  the  Mercians  and  Lindiswara.  When 
the  large  sees  were  parted  by  Theodore,  Leicester  became  the  seat 
of  that  of  the  Middle  English. 

2  Leland,  Itinerary,  i.  28,  29.  Archdeacon  Trollope  has  examined 
the  site,  etc.,  of  Ancaster  in  Archseol.  Journal,  xxvii.  1. 


CHAP.  11. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
c.  570. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


78 

char  11.  the  country  for  twenty  miles  round.  Hundreds  of 
conquests  potters  were  employed  in  the  manufacture  of  its 

of  the  i  1  1  • 

Engle,  wares;  and  the  hunting-scenes,  the  scenes  of  boar- 
c.soo-  spearing  and  stag -chasing,  which  they  have  graven 
c.jw.  on  the  surface  of  their  work  lift  for  us  a  corner  of 
the  veil  that  shrouds  the  life  of  Roman  Britain.1  It 


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CAMULODUN  U» 
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Engluh  AEGELES  BURH 

Modern  OodmanchesUr 

English  Miies 


lULLONIACAEj 


~Brockle!/\l7  i  11 


Stanfords  Geographical  Eitab . 


must  have  been  the  North  Gyrwas,  as  their  country 
included  in  later  days  its  neighbor  Peterborough,2 


1  For  Durobrivae,  see  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon, 
pp.  263,  264,  and  a  paper  by  Archdeacon  Trollope,  Archaeol.  Jour¬ 
nal,  xxx.  127.  Mr.  Artis  has  given  plates  of  the  remains  in  his  Duro¬ 
brivae  Illustrated.  2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  6. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


79 


who  pushed  up  the  Nen  to  the  conquest  of  Duro-  chap.  n. 
brivas.  Meanwhile  the  South  Gyrwas  were  at  work  conquests 
along  the  line  of  the  Ouse  and  the  Cam,  where  Du-  Eng\e. 
rolipons,  near  the  present  Huntingdon,  but  on  the  c.soo_ 
other  side  of  the  river,  guarded  a  bridge  over  the  c-  57°- 
Ouse,  and  where  some  miles  to  the  southeast  the 
country  was  commanded  by  the  town  of  Cambori- 
tum,  whose  site  became  in  later  days  the  site  of 
Cambridge.1  The  place  was  probably  of  impor¬ 
tance  ;  but  so  utter  was  its  destruction  that  even 
in  Baeda's  day  nothing  was  left  but  a  few  heaps  of 
ruined  stone  from  which  the  nuns  of  Ely  fetched  a 
sculptured  sarcophagus  of  marble  when  they  sought 
a  tomb  for  their  abbess  cEthelthryth.2 3 

Masters  of  the  road  along  the  borders  of  the  Wash,  The  Engle 
the  Gyrwas  would  naturally  be  drawn  forward  to  the  ampton- 
upland  which  juts  from  the  westward  into  its  waters,  sh"e' 
the  upland  of  Northamptonshire.  In  this  direction, 
however,  it  was  difficult  of  access.  The  undulating 
reach  of  grassy  meadows,  broken  by  thick  hedge¬ 
rows  or  copses  or  tree-crowned  knolls,  and  dotted 
everywhere  with  oak  or  elm,  which  we  see  in  the 
shire  of  to-day,  was  at  the  close  of  the  sixth  century 
little  more  than  a  vast  woodland.  Yardley  Chase 


1  Even  after  its  break-up  into  shire  land  the  oneness  of  the  South- 
Gyrwan  country  was  recognized  in  the  fact  that  there  was  (at  least 

in  Camden’s  time)  but  one  high-sheriff  for  the  whole  area.  “  He 
is  chosen  out  of  Cambridgeshire  one  year,  out  of  the  Isle  of  Ely  the 
second,  and  the  third  out  of  Huntingdonshire”  (Camden's  Britan¬ 
nia,  ed.  1753,  i.  502). 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  19:  “  Venerunt  ad  civitatulam  quandam 
desolatam  .  .  .  quae  lingua  Anglorum  Granta-caester  vocatur;  et 
mox  invenerunt  juxta  muros  civitatis  locellum  de  marmore  albo 
pulcherrime  factum,  operculo  quoque  similis  lapidis  aptissime  tec¬ 
tum.” 


8o 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  II. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Engle. 

c.  500- 
C.  570. 


and  the  forests  of  Selsey  and  Whittlebury  are  but 
dwindled  representatives  of  a  long  barrier  of  copse 
and  thicket  that  stretched  along  its  southeastern 
slopes,  and  amidst  whose  fastnesses  lay  the  town 
which  is  represented  by  our  Towcester.  Even  as 
late  as  the  Middle  Ages  the  western  half  of  its  area, 
from  the  edge  of  the  Fens  as  far  inland  as  Rocking¬ 
ham  and  Kettering,  was  still  one  of  the  largest  for¬ 
ests  of  the  island ;  and  in  earlier  days  this  forest 
had  stretched  yet  further  towards  the  Nen.1  It  was 
through  this  huge  woodland  that  the  Engle  from 
the  Wash  would  have  to  struggle  as  they  mounted 
the  upland ;  and  their  progress  must  have  been  a 
slow  one.  Their  fellow  -  invaders  from  the  valley 
of  the  Soar  had  an  easier  task.  Along  the  head¬ 
waters  of  the  Nen  the  upland  became  clearer;  and 
though  fragments  of  woodland  such  as  the  oak 
woods  that  lingered  on  around  Althorpe  and  Holm- 
by  linked  Rockingham  with  the  vaster  forest  of  Ar¬ 
den,  and  thus  carried  on  the  forest  line  across  Cen¬ 
tral  Britain  from  the  Severn  to  the  Wash,  yet  open 
spaces  remained  for  settlement  and  communication.2 
It  was  across  this  clearer  ground  that  the  Watling 
Street  struck  after  it  had  mounted  from  Stony- 
Stratford  and  emerged  from  the  woods  of  Whittle¬ 
bury;  and  here  it  was  that  the  bulk  of  the  new  set¬ 
tlers  raised  their  homes  around  the  “home-town"  of 
their  tribe,  the  Hampton  which  was  known  in  after- 

1  For  Rockingham  and  its  forest,  see  a  paper  by  Mr.  G.  T.  Clark, 
Archasol.  Journal,  xxxv.  209. 

s  By  Elizabeth’s  day  sheep-farming,  for  which  this  district  was 
renowned,  had  made  this  part  of  the  shire  “a  great  open  pasture," 
as  now.  But  the  woodlands  were  still  thick  about  Towcester  and 
Rockingham  (Camden,  Britannia,  ed.  1753,  i.  511)- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


8l 


days  as  Northampton  to  distinguish  it  from  the  chap.  >'• 
South-Hampton  beside  the  Solent  conquests 

While  Engle  bands  were  thus  pushing  up  the  Engie 
Soar  to  Ratae  and  the  upland  which  formed  the  cToT 
southern  brink  of  the  Trent  basin,  others  must  have  c-  57°- 
been  advancing  along  the  great  river  beyond  the  rh£  West 
bounds  of  the  Middle  English  to  near  its  junction 
with  the  Tame.  As  they  struck  to  the  north  up  the 
valleys  of  the  Derwent  and  the  Dove  into  the  moor¬ 
lands  of  the  Peak,  these  seem  to  have  become  known 
as  the  Pec-saetan ;  but  their  settlement  in  what  was 
the  later  Derbyshire  would  necessarily  be  a  scanty 
and  unimportant  one.  Of  far  greater  importance 
was  the  advance  of  their  fellows  to  the  west.  Spread¬ 
ing  along  the  quiet  open  meadows  beside  the  Tame, 
the  invaders  as  they  fixed  their  “worth”  of  Tam- 
worth  on  a  little  rise  above  its  waters  at  their  union 
with  the  Anker,  saw  the  dark  and  barren  moorlands 
of  Cannock  Chase  stretching  like  a  barrier  across 
their  path.  Lichfield,  “  the  field  of  the  dead,”  may, 
as  the  local  tradition  ran,  mark  the  place  of  some 
fight  that  left  them  masters  of  the  ground  beneath 
its  slopes ;  but  the  Chase  itself  was  impassable.  At 
either  end  of  it,  however,  a  narrow  gap  gave  access 
to  the  country  in  its  rear.  Between  its  northern 
extremity  and  the  Need  wood  which  lay  thick  along 
the  Trent,  the  space  along  the  channel  of  the  great 
river  was  widened  by  the  little  valley  of  the  Sow. 
Between  its  southern  end  and  the  dark  ede;e  of  Ar- 
den,  which  then  ran  to  the  north  of  our  Walsall  and 
WTlverhampton,  interposed  a  like  gap  of  open  coun¬ 
try  through  which  the  Watling  Street  passed  on  its 
way  to  the  Severn.  By  both  of  these  openings  the 

6 


82 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^ii.  West  Engle,  as  this  folk  of  conquerors  at  first  called 
conquests  itself,  pushed  into  the  open  tract  between  Cannock 
Engie.  and  the  low  line  of  moorlands  thrown  down  from 
c.  5oo-  tfie  heights  of  Mole  Cop  in  the  north,  which  marks 
c-  57°-  the  water-parting  between  the  basins  of  the  Severn 
and  the  Trent.  Stafford,  the  “Stone-ford,”  marks 
their  passage  over  the  Sow  to  the  head-waters  of  the 
great  river  which  had  led  them  through  the  heart  of 
Central  Britain,  though  the  woods  thrown  out  from 
Need  wood  across  the  district  of  Trentham  must 
have  long  hindered  them  from  penetrating  to  its 
northern  founts.  Here,  however,  they  were  brought 
for  a  while  to  a  stand  ;  for  that  these  moorlands  long 
remained  a  march  or  border-land  between  Engle  and 
Welshman  we  see  from  the  name  by  which  the  West 
English  became  more  commonly  known,  the  Mer¬ 
cians,  or  the  Men  of  the  March.1 


1  The  date  of  the  conquest  of  Mercia  can  only  be  a  matter  of  in¬ 
ference,  as  we  have  no  record  of  any  part  of  the  winning  of  Central 
Britain.  Florence  of  Worcester,  ed.  Thorpe  (vol.  i.  p.  264)  says,  “  post 
initium  regni  Cantuariorum  principium  exstitit  regni  Merciorum,” 
which  tells  us  nothing;  but  if  Penda  was  (E.  Chron.  a.  626)  fifty 
when  he  began  his  reign  in  626  (Baeda,  ii.  20,  seems  to  put  this  in 
633),  he  was  born  about  576,  when  we  may  take  it  his  people  were 
already  on  the  upper  Trent.  This  squares  with  Huntingdon’s  state¬ 
ment,  “  Regnum  Merce  incipit,  quod  Crida  ut  ex  scriptis  conjicere 
possumus  primus  obtinuit”  (  Hist.  Angl.  ed.  Arnold,  p.  53),  a  fact 
which  he  inserts  between  Ceawlin’s  overthrow  at  Fethanlea  in  584 
and  his  death  in  593.  Crida,  or  Creoda,  was  Penda’s  grandfather : 
“  Penda  was  the  son  of  Pybba,  Pybba  of  Creoda  ”  (E.  Chron.  a.  626). 
The  setting-up  of  a  king  would,  no  doubt,  follow  here  as  elsewhere 
a  period  of  conquest  under  ealdormen  which  would  carry  us  back 
to  near  the  middle  of  the  century  for  the  first  attack  on  the  head¬ 
waters  of  the  Trent.  The  conquests  of  the  Middle  Engle  would  of 
course  precede  those  of  the  Mercians.  We  may  gather  from  the 
limits  of  the  bishopric  of  the  Mercians  that  the  Pec-saetan  of  our 
Derbyshire  were  only  a  part  of  these  West  Engle. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


83 


CHAPTER  III. 

CONQUESTS  OF  THE  SAXONS. 

c.  500-577. 

With  the  settlement  of  the  Mercians  the  work 
of  the  Engle  in  Central  and  Northern  Britain  was 
done.  But  we  have  still  to  follow  the  work  of  the 
conquerors  who  through  the  same  memorable  years 
had  been  making  themselves  masters  of  the  south. 
While  the  Engle  had  been  winning  one  flank  of  the 
Saxon  Shore,  the  Saxons  were  as  slowly  winning  an 
even  more  important  district  on  its  other  flank.1  To 
westward  of  the  strip  of  coast  between  the  Andreds- 
weald  and  the  sea  which  had  been  won  by  the  war 
bands  of  /Ella,  the  alluvial  flat  whose  inlets  had 
drawn  the  South  Saxons  to  their  landing  in  Chich¬ 
ester  Water  broadened  into  a  wider  tract  around  a 
greater  estuary,  that  of  the  Southampton  Water,  as 
it  strikes  inland  from  the  sea-channels  of  the  So- 
lent  and  Spithead.  This  opening  in  the  coast  was 
already  recognized  as  of  both  military  and  commer¬ 
cial  importance.  It  was  the  one  break  in  the  long 
line  of  forests  which,  whether  by  the  fastnesses  of 
the  Andredsweald  or  by  the  hardly  less  formidable 
fastnesses  of  our  Dorset,  stretched  like  a  natural 
barrier  along  the  whole  southern  coast  of  Britain ; 

1  From  this  point  we  are  again  on  distinctly  historic  ground,  as 
the  Chronicle  records  every  step  in  the  conquest  of  Wessex. 


The  West 
Saxons. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


84 

for  though  woodlands  lay  even  here  along  the  shore, 
it  was  in  a  thin  line  broken  by  the  estuary  and  by 
the  channels  of  its  tributaries,  and  cleft  by  the  roads 
that  run  from  Winchester  to  Porchester  or  along  the 
valley  of  the  Itchen.1 *  By  either  estuary  or  roads  it 
was  easy  to  reach  the  upland  of  the  Gwent,  and  to 
strike  across  it  into  the  very  heart  of  Britain.  The 
importance  of  such  a  point  was  shown  by  the  reso¬ 
lute  resistance  of  its  defenders  ;  and  the  Saxons  who 
attacked  it  during  the  latter  years  of  the  fifth  cen¬ 
tury  seem  to  have  failed  to  make  any  permanent 
settlement  along  the  coast.  The  descents  of  their 
leaders,  Cerdic  and  Cynric,  in  495,°  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Itchen,  and  a  fresh  descent  on  Porchester  in 
501, 3 4  can  have  been  little  more  than  plunder  raids; 
and  though  in  508  1  a  far  more  serious  conflict  ended 
in  the  fall  of  five  thousand  Britons  and  their  chief, 
it  was  not  till  514  that  the  tribe  whose  older  name 
seems  to  have  been  that  of  the  Gewissas,  but  who 
were  to  be  more  widely  known  as  the  West  Saxons, 
actually  landed  with  a  view  to  definite  conquest.5 

Pushing  up  the  Itchen  to  the  plunder  of  Winches¬ 
ter,  they  must  have  been  already  masters  of  the 


'  For  these  woodlands,  see  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  pp.  31,  32.  I  again 

follow  mainly  the  guidance  of  this  paper,  as  far  as  the  West-Saxon 
conquests  are  concerned,  up  to  the  battle  of  Bedford. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  495. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  501. 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  508,  and  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  ed.  Arnold,  p.  46, 
who  adds  that  the  West  Sexe  were  aided  here  by  the  Kentish  men 
and  South  Sexe. 

5  E.  Chron.  a.  514.  My  inferences  from  the  entries  in  the  Chron¬ 
icle  are  here  somewhat  different  from  those  of  Dr.  Guest;  nor  have 
I  felt  justified  in  adopting  his  ingenious  theory  as  to  the  struggle 
of  508.  See  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  pp.  55-60. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


85 


downs  around  it  when  they  turned  to  clear  the  Brit-  chaf.  m. 
ons  from  the  forests  in  their  rear ;  for  a  fight  at  conquests 
Charford  on  the  lower  Avon  in  519  seems  to  mark  Saxons, 
the  close  of  a  conflict  in  which  the  provincials  werec  5^577. 


driven  from  the  woodlands  whose  shrunken  remains  c~uest 
meet  us  in  the  New  Forest,  and  in  which  the  whole 
district  between  the  Andredsweald  and  the  lower  isle  of 
Avon  was  secured  for  English  holding.1  The  sue-  v“' 


(Sw"  It  s  burh 

YTd 

t  £tonwierLQy~.  v^MBPE 


V  a  n  l.  u  1  <1  ■  u 

■'tRloS  yV,7',^'F'a'‘ri'vENTA  BE(.G*'RUM 


y/zv  T  E  u 

. 


4-.V- 

■sfKgu*, 


-*V  'A 

«AJ  <A«i. 

a  /  x  y 

ANDERIDA 

./IJIDDEDES  CEASTER- 

*eoensey 


SOUTH  BRIT  AT  N 


Homan  name*  -VECTIS,  English  -SdERO  BYRlC  ,  Modem  - Chichester 
English  Miles 

1 _ 1 _ l__ _ 1 - 1 

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Stanford*  Geographical  Eetabi 


cess  at  Charford  was  followed  by  the  political  organ¬ 
ization  of  the  conquerors ;  and  Cerdic  and  Cynric 
became  kings  of  the  West  Saxons.2  Here,  however, 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  519  ;  Aithelweard,  a.  519. 


E.  Chron.  a.  519. 


86 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  m.  their  success  came  to  an  end.  Acrcss  Avon  the 
conquests  forest  belt  again  thickened  into  a  barrier  that  held 
Saxons,  the  invaders  at  bay ;  for  when  in  the  following  year, 
c.  50CL577.  5 20>  they  clove  their  way  through  it  to  the  valley 
of  the  Frome,  eager  perhaps  for  the  sack  of  a  city 
whose  site  is  marked  by  our  Dorchester,  they  were 
met  by  the  Britons  at  Badbury  or  Mount  Badon,1 2 
and  thrown  back  in  what  after-events  show  to  have 
been  a  crushing  defeat.  The  border-line  of  our 
Hampshire  to  the  west  still  marks  the  point  at  which 
the  progress  of  the  Gewissas  was  arrested  by  this 
overthrow ; s  and  how  severe  was  the  check  is  shown 
by  the  long  cessation  of  any  advance  in  this  quarter. 
We  hear  only  of  a  single  battle  of  the  West  Sexe3 
during  the  rest  of  the  reign  of  Cerdic;  while  the 
Jutes  who  had  aided  in  his  descents,  and  who  had 
struck  up  the  Hamble  to  a  clearing  along  its  course 
where  the  villages  of  Meon  Stoke  and  West  and 
East  Meon  still  preserve  a  memory  of  their  settle¬ 
ment  of  the  Meonwara,4  turned  to  the  conquest  of 

1  Gildas,  Hist.  sec.  26.  For  the  identification  of  this  battle  with 
that  of  Mount  Badon,  and  of  its  site  with  Badbury  in  Dorsetshire, 
see  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  pp.  61-63. 

2  The  position  of  Sorbiodunum,  which  was  still  in  British  hands, 
gives  at  least  one  firm  standpoint  in  the  question  of  West-Saxon 
boundaries  at  this  time.  The  limits  which  Guest  assigns  them 
(E.  E.  Sett.  pp.  64,  65)  to  north  and  east — reaching  as  far  as  the 
Cherwell  and  Englefield — seem  to  me  inconsistent  with  their  later 
campaigns  ;  in  fact,  I  can  hardly  doubt  that  Hampshire,  as  a  whole, 
represents  the  West-Saxon  kingdom  after  520. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  527. 

4  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15  :  “  De  Jutarum  origine  sunt  Cantuarii  et 
Vectuarii,  hoc  est,  ea  gens  quae  Vectam  tenet  insulam,  et  ea  quae 
usque  hodie  in  provincia  occidentalium  Saxonum  Jutarum  natio 
nominatur,  posita  contra  ipsam  insulam  Vectam.”  Politically  the 
Meonwara  went  with  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  not  with  Wessex.  See 
Wulfere’s  grant  to  ^Edilwalch  ;  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  13. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


87 

the  island  that  lay  off  the  Solent.  In  530  Cerdic  and  chap.  hi. 
Cynric  subdued  the  Isle  of  Wight,  but  it  was  in  the  conquests 
interest  not  of  their  own  people  but  of  its  allies,  for  Saxons, 
the  new  settlers  of  the  island,  the  Wightgara,  whose c  500I577 
name  survives  in  their  town  of  Carisbrook  or  Wight-  — 
gara-burh,  were  not  West  Sexe,  but  Jutes.1  Small  as 
it  was,  the  conquest  was  a  memorable  one ;  for  with 
it  ended  for  centuries  the  work  of  the  Jutes  in  Brit¬ 
ain.  Causes  which  are  hidden  from  us  must  have 
diverted  their  energies  elsewhere ;  the  winning  of 
Britain  was  left  to  the  Saxon  and  the  Engle ;  and  it 
was  not  till  Britain  was  won  that  the  Jutes  returned 
to  dispute  it  with  their  old  allies  under  the  name  of 
the  Danes.2 

But  the  conquest  of  the  isle  had  hardly  less  sig-  ^"tses°fx 
nificance  for  the  West  Sexe  themselves.  If  they  ons. 
turned  to  the  sea,  it  was  that  landwards  all  progress 
seemed  denied  them.  Not  only  had  the  woodlands 
of  the  coast  proved  impassable,  but  the  invaders  of 
the  Gwent  found  barriers  almost  as  strong  on  every 
side.  Higher  up  on  their  western  border  the  fortress 
of  Sorbiodunum,  or  Old  Sarum,  guarded  the  valley 
of  the  Avon  and  blocked  the  way  to  Salisbury  Plain, 
while  to  eastward  of  the  Gwent  ran  the  thickets  of 
the  Andredsweald,  and  beneath  its  northern  escarp¬ 
ment  stretched  a  forest  which  for  centuries  to  come 
filled  the  valley  of  the  Rennet.  The  strength  of 
these  natural  barriers  was  doubled  by  strongholds 
which  furnished  the  Britons  with  bases  for  defensive 
operations  as  well  as  with  supplies  of  fighting-men ; 
for  while  Silchester  or  Calleva  barred  the  march  of 


1  See  passage  quoted  above.  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15. 

2  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  46. 


88 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


Sorbiodu- 

num. 


the  Gewissas  across  the  tract  between  the  Andreds- 
weald  and  the  Thames,  Cunetio,  on  the  site  of  our 
Marlborough,  held  the  downs  to  the  north,  and 
guarded  the  road  that  led  from  Winchester  to  the 
Severn  valley.  How  formidable  these  obstacles  were 
we  see  from  the  long  inaction  of  the  Wrest  Saxons. 
While  the  Engle  in  the  north  were  slowly  fighting 
their  way  across  Yorkshire  or  Lincolnshire,  their 
rivals  in  the  south  lay  quiet  for  thirty  years  within 
the  limits  of  our  Hampshire.  From  the  position,  in¬ 
deed,  of  their  central  “tun”  of  Hampton  (our  South¬ 
ampton),  it  would  seem  as  if  their  main  settlement 
was  still  on  the  coast,  and  as  if  the  ruins  of  Win¬ 
chester  were  left  silent  and  deserted  in  the  upper 
downs. 

What  broke  this  inaction — whether  the  Britons  had 
grown  weaker,  or  whether  fresh  reinforcements  had 
strengthened  their  opponents — we  do  not  know.  We 
hear  only  that  Cynric,  whom  Cerdic’s  death  left  King 
of  the  West  Saxons,  again  took  up  the  work  of  in¬ 
vasion  in  552  by  a  fresh  advance  on  the  west.1  Win¬ 
chester  was  the  meeting-point  of  five  Roman  roads ; 
and  of  these  one  struck  directly  westward,  along  the 
northern  skirts  of  the  woodlands  that  filled  the  space 
between  the  lower  Itchen  and  the  mid-valley  of  the 
Avon,  to  the  fortress  of  Old  Sarum.5  Celt  and  Ro¬ 
man  alike  had  seen  the  military  value  of  the  height 
from  which  the  eye  sweeps  nowadays  over  the  grassy 
meadows  of  the  Avon  to  the  arrowy  spire  of  Salis¬ 
bury  ;  and  admirable  as  the  position  was  in  itself,  it 
had  been  strengthened  at  a  vast  cost  of  labor.  The 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  552. 

3  See  map  in  Guest’s  E.  E.  Settlements  in  Southern  Britain. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


89 

camp  on  the  summit  of  the  knoll  was  girt  in  by  a  chap.  hi. 
trench  hewn  so  deeply  in  the  chalk  that  from  the  conquests 
inner  side  of  it  the  white  face  of  the  rampart  rose  a  Saxons, 
hundred  feet  high,  while  strong  outworks  protected,,  5^I577 
the  approaches  to  the  fortress  from  the  west  and  from  — 
the  east.1  Arms  must  have  been  useless  against  such 
a  stronghold  as  this ;  and,  though  the  Britons  were 
“  put  to  flight  ”  before  its  investment,  the  reduction 
of  Sorbiodunum  was  probably  due  rather  to  famine 
or  want  of  water  than  to  the  sword. 

But  its  fall  brought  with  it  the  easy  winning  of  the  Conquest 
district  which  it  guarded,  as  well  as  the  downs  on  Wiltshire. 
whose  edge  stood  the  strange  monument,  then  as 
now  an  object  of  wonder,  to  which  the  conquerors  as 
they  marched  beside  its  mystic  circle  gave  the  name 
of  the  Hanging  Stones,  Stonehenge.  The  Gewissas 
passed  over  the  Stratford,  or  paved  ford  by  which 
the  road  they  had  followed  from  Winchester  passed 
the  river,  to  the  westernmost  reaches  of  the  Gwent, 
the  district  we  now  know  as  Salisbury  Plain.  To  the 
south  of  them  as  they  marched,  behind  the  lower 
Avon  and  its  little  affluent  of  the  Nadder,  a  broken 
and  woodland  country  whose  memory  lingers  in 
Cranbourne  Chase  screened  the  later  Dorsetshire 
from  their  arms;2 3  but  in  their  front  the  open  downs 
offered  no  line  of  defence,  and  the  Gewissas  could 
push  along  the  road  from  Old  Sarum  unhindered 
till  they  reached  the  steep  slope  down  which  the  up- 


1  G.  J.  Clark,  “  Earthworks  of  the  Wiltshire  Avon,”  Archaeol.  Jour¬ 

nal,  xxxii.  290. 

3  The  name  of  “  Britford,”  which  still  clings  to  a  passage  over  the 
Avon  in  this  quarter,  may  mark  a  point  in  the  new  border-line 
where  the  Briton  still  faced  his  foe. 


90 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iii.  land  fell  into  the  valley  of  the  Frome.  How  roughly 
conquests  their  march  was  checked  at  this  point  by  the  dense 
Saxons,  forests  which  filled  the  Frome  valley  we  see  from  the 
c.  500-577.  ^act  that  these  woodlands  remained  in  British  hands 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years ;  and  the  significant 
name  of  “  Mere  ”  preserves  for  us  the  memory  of  the 
border -bound  which  the  Gewissas  were  forced  to 
draw  along  the  western  steeps  of  their  new  conquest. 
The  conquerors  turned  back  to  settle  in  the  land 
they  had  won — in  the  river-valleys  which  scored  the 
surface  of  the  downs,  in  the  tiny  bends  and  grassy 
nooks  of  the  vale  of  Avon,  or  in  the  meadows  along 
the  course  of  its  affluent,  the  Wil  or  Wiley.  It  was 
probably  in  the  last  that  the  main  body  of  the  in¬ 
vaders  fixed  their  home;  for  it  was  the  Wiley,  and 
the  little  township,  or  Wil-ton,  which  rose  beside  it, 
which  gave  them  from  this  time  their  new  name  of 
Wil-saetas.  From  this  time,  indeed,  the  Gewissas, 
or  West  Saxons,  felt  the  need  of  local  names  for  the 
peoples  into  which  conquest  broke  them  as  they 
pushed  over  the  country.  But  the  character  of  these 
names  shows  the  looseness  of  the  bonds  that  held 
such  “folks”  together.  Each  knew  itself  simply  as  a 
group  of  “  saetan,”  or  “  settlers,”  in  the  land  it  had 
won — Wilt-saetan  in  the  lands  about  the  Wiley,  Dor- 
saetan  in  the  forest  tract  through  which  wound  the 
“  dwr”  or  dark  water  of  the  Frome,  Somer-smtan  or 
Defna-saetan  in  lands  yet  more  to  the  west. 

Cy uric's  But  there  was  little  to  detain  Cynric  in  the  tiny 

vales  and  bare  reaches  of  upland  which  his  arms 
had  as  yet  given  him;  and  in  556,  only  four  years 
after  the  fall  of  Old  Sarum,  he  pushed  forward  again 
alonsf  a  road  that  led  from  Winchester  northwest- 

O 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


91 


ward  in  the  direction  of  Cirencester  and  the  Severn,  chap.  hi. 
Descending  the  deep  escarpment  which  forms  the  conquests 
northern  face  of  the  Hampshire  Downs,  he  threaded  saxonl 
his  way  through  the  woodlands  of  the  vale  of  Pewsey,  5Q0;^77 
whose  relics  survive  in  the  forest  of  Savernake,  and  — 
again  mounted  the  slopes  on  the  further  side  of  them. 

Here  he  made  himself  master  of  the  town  of  Cunetio 
and  of  the  upland  which  lay  about  it  by  a  victory  on 
the  very  brink  of  the  downs  at  Barbury  Hill.1  The 
ground,  however,  of  which  he  thus  became  lord  was 
far  from  affording  any  obstacle  to  further  advance ; 
on  the  contrary,  its  very  character  seemed  to  draw 
the  Gewissas  onward  to  new  aggressions.  The 
Marlborough  Downs  are,  in  fact,  the  starting-point 
from  which  the  second  and  greatest  of  its  chalk 
ranges  runs  across  Southern  Britain.  The  upland 
trends  to  the  northeast  under  the  name  of  the  Ilsley 
Downs  till  it  reaches  a  gap  through  which  the 
Thames  strikes  southward  to  its  lower  river-valley; 
then  rising  again  in  the  Chilterns,  it  broadens  at 
last  into  the  Gwent,  in  which  the  East  Anglians  had 
found  a  home.  In  its  earlier  course  this  range  nat¬ 
urally  called  Cynric’s  men  to  a  fresh  advance ;  for 
from  the  downs  above  Marlborough  the  high  ground 
runs  on  without  a  break  to  the  course  of  the  Thames. 

This  tract,  however,  like  that  which  they  had  trav¬ 
ersed  in  the  Gwent,  must  have  been  a  scantily  peo¬ 
pled  one ;  and  its  invaders  would  turn  with  eager¬ 
ness  to  the  more  tempting  district  which  lay  in  the 
lower  ground  on  either  side  of  it.  The  northern 

1  “  Byran-byrig,”  E.  Chron.  a.  556 ;  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  67  ;  Hunt¬ 
ingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  ed.  Arnold,  p.  51,  gives  large  details  of  this  bat¬ 
tle,  but  we  do  not  know  his  authority  for  them. 


92 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iii.  face  of  the  downs  consists  of  a  line  of  steep  cliffs, 
conquests  looking  out  over  a  vale  through  which  the  stream 

of  the  °  ° 

Saxons.  of  the  Ock  pours  its  waters  into  the  Thames.  On 
c.  500-577.  the  face  of  this  escarpment  the  traveller  still  sees, 
drawn  white  against  the  scanty  turf,  the  gigantic 
form  of  a  horse  which  gives  the  vale  of  White 
Horse  its  name,  and  which  tradition  looks  on  as  a 
work  of  the  conquering  Gewissas.  Another  monu¬ 
ment  of  their  winning  of  this  district  lingers  in  the 
rude  stones  called  Weyland  Smith’s  House,  a  crom¬ 
lech  of  primeval  times  where  the  Saxons  found  a 
dwelling-place  for  the  weird  legend  of  a  hero-smith 
which  they  brought  with  them  from  their  German 
homeland. 

conquest  The  White  Horse  glimmers  over  a  broad  and 

of  .  . 

Berkshire,  fertile  region,  whose  local  names  recall  for  us  the 
settlement  of  the  conquerors  in  hamlets  that  have 
grown  into  quiet  little  towns  like  Wantage,  the 
future  birthplace  of  Ailfred,  or  in  homesteads  that 
crowned  the  low  rises  or  “duns”  which  overlooked 
the  valley,  such  as  the  dun  where  the  Farrings 
planted  their  Farringdon,  or  another  dun  at  the 
confluence  of  the  Ock  and  the  Thames,  where  the 
West  Saxon  Abba  chose  the  site  for  a  dwelling-place 
which  grew  in  later  days  into  our  Abingdon.  On 
the  south  the  downs  fell  in  gentler  slopes  to  the 
vale  of  the  Kennet,  whose  silvery  stream  ran  through 
masses  of  woodland,  past  the  ford  at  Hungerford 
and  the  “  new  burh  ”  of  the  conquerors  which  sur¬ 
vives  in  Newbury,  to  the  low  and  swampy  meadows 
where  it  meets  the  Thames,  as  the  river  bursts  from 
its  cleft  through  the  chalk  range  to  open  out  into 
its  lower  valley.  In  these  meadows  the  house  of 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


93 


the  Readings  planted  a  settlement  which  has  grown  CHAP-  m- 
into  the  busy  town  that  preserves  their  name.  Still  conquests 
further  to  the  east  the  invaders  pushed  their  way  s^xonl 
into  the  tangled  woodland  that  stretched  along  thec  50^I577 
low  clay  flats  which  bordered  the  southern  bank  of  — 
the  Thames,  and  where  the  predominance  of  the 
box,  or  bearroc,  may  have  given  in  after -days  its 
name  of  “  Bearrocshire,”  or  Berkshire,  to  the  whole 
tract  of  valley  and  down  which  this  fresh  advance 
added  to  the  dominions  of  the  West  Saxons.' 

With  its  conquest  the  winning  of  the  southern  The  valley 
uplands  was  complete.  And  with  the  winning  of  Thames. 
these  uplands  the  whole  island  lay  open  to  the 
Gewissas ;  for  the  Andredsweald,  which  had  held 
back  the  invader  for  half  a  century,  was  turned  as 
soon  as  the  West  Saxons  stood  masters  of  the 
Southern  Gwent,  and  their  country  now  jutted  for¬ 
ward  like  a  huge  bastion  into  the  heart  of  uncon¬ 
quered  Britain.  Only  on  one  side  were  the  obstacles 
in  their  way  still  serious.  The  woods  of  Dorsetshire, 
with  the  thick  wedge  of  forest  which  blocked  the 
valley  of  the  Frorne  beneath  the  Wiltshire  Downs, 
were  for  long  years  to  hold  any  western  advance  at 
bay ;  but  elsewhere  the  land  was  open  to  their  at¬ 
tack.  On  the  northwest  easy  slopes  led  to  the  crest 
of  the  Cotswolds,  from  whence  the  Severn  valley  lay 
before  them  for  their  prey.  On  the  north  their 
march  would  find  no  natural  obstacles  as  it  passed 
up  the  Cherwell  valley  to  penetrate  either  to  the 
central  plain  of  Britain  or  to  the  Wash.  Above  all, 
to  the  eastward  opened  before  them  the  valley  of 

1  For  these  woodlands,  see  Guest’s  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  32.  The  Rennet 
valley  was  not  disafforested  till  the  time  of  Henry  the  Third. 


94 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


Its 

defences. 


the  Thames.  From  its  springs  near  the  crest  of  the 
Cotswolds  the  river  falls  quietly  to  the  low  ground 
beneath  the  Marlborough  Downs,  and  then  turns 
abruptly  to  the  south  to  hew  a  channel  through  the 
line  of  chalk  uplands,  and  thus  part  the  Berkshire 
heights  from  the  Chilterns.  Once  out  of  this  narrow 
gorge,  it  bends  round  the  woodlands  where  the  ad¬ 
vanced  guard  of  Cynric’s  men  were  feeling  their 
way  into  the  fastnesses  about  Windsor,  and,  rolling 
in  a  slower  and  larger  current  eastward  through  the 
wide  valley  that  lies  between  the  north  downs  and 
the  East-Anglian  heights,  after  a  course  of  two  hun¬ 
dred  miles  it  reaches  its  estuary  and  the  sea. 

No  road  can  have  seemed  so  tempting  to  the 
earlier  invaders  as  this  water-road  of  the  Thames, 
leading  as  it  did  straight  from  the  Channel  to  the 
heart  of  Britain  through  an  open  and  fruitful  coun¬ 
try  ;  and  it  was  by  this  road  that  their  advance 
seemed  destined  to  be  made  when  they  settled 
on  either  side  of  its  estuary  in  Essex  and  in  Kent. 
But  a  century  had  passed  since  these  settlements, 
and  the  Thames  valley  still  remained  untouched. 
Tempting  as  the  road  seemed,  indeed,  no  inlet  into 
Britain  was  more  effectually  barred.  On  either  side 
the  river-mouth,  at  but  little  distance  from  the  coast 
on  which  East  Saxon  and  Kentishman  were  en¬ 
camped,  long  belts  of  woodland  and  fen  stretched 
to  the  very  brink  of  the  Thames.  On  the  south  of 
it  the  fastnesses  of  the  Weald  found  their  line  of 
defence  prolonged  by  huge  swamps  that  stretched 
to  the  river,  and  whose  memory  is  still  preserved 
by  the  local  names  as  by  the  local  floods  of  Rother- 
hithe  and  Bermondsey.  To  the  north  as  formidable 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


95 


a  line  of  defence  presented  itself  in  the  tangled  chap,  hi. 
forest  whose  last  relics  survive  in  the  woods  of  conquests 
Epping  and  in  the  name  of  Hainault,  and  this  bar-  saxcnt 
rier  of  woodland  was  backed  by  the  swamps  of  thec  5^T577 
lower  Lea  to  the  rear  of  it.  The  one  line  of  ad-  — 
vance,  in  fact,  open  to  an  invader  was  the  course  of 
the  Thames  itself,  and  the  course  of  the  Thames 
was  blocked  by  the  fortress  of  London. 

The  commercial  greatness  of  London  has  made  The  site  of 
men  forget  its  military  importance,  but  from  the  first 
moment  of  its  history  till  late  into  the  Middle  Ages 
London  was  one  of  the  strongest  of  our  fortresses. 

Its  site,  indeed,  must  have  been  dictated,  like  that 
of  most  early  cities,  by  the  advantages  which  it  pre¬ 
sented  as  well  for  defence  as  for  trade.1  It  stood  at 
the  one  point  by  which  either  merchant  or  invader 
could  penetrate  from  the  estuary  into  the  valley  of 
the  Thames;  and  in  its  earlier  days, before  the  great 
changes  wrought  by  the  embankment  of  the  Romans, 
this  was  also  the  first  point  at  which  any  rising 
ground  for  the  site  of  such  a  town  presented  itself 
on  either  shore  of  the  river.  Nowhere  has  the  hand 
of  man  moulded  ground  into  shapes  more  strangely 
contrasted  with  its  natural  form  than  on  the  site  of 
London.  Even  as  late  as  the  time  of  Caesar,  the  soil 
which  a  large  part  of  it  covers  can  have  been  little 
but  a  vast  morass.  Below  Fulham  the  river  stretched 
at  high  tide  over  the  ground  that  lies  on  either  side 

o  o 


1  Rev.  W.  J.  Loftie,  “  London  before  the  Houses,”  Macmillan’s 
Magazine,  xxxiv.  356.  To  this  paper  we  may  add  Dr.  Guest's  re¬ 
marks  on  ancient  Middlesex  in  his  “Aulus  Plautius,”  Archaeol. 
Journal,  xxiii.  159.  See,  too,  Quarterly  Review,  July,  1880,  “Mid¬ 
dlesex.” 


96 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  m. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


of  its  present  channel  from  the  rises  of  Kensington 
and  Hyde  Park  to  the  opposite  shores  of  Peckham 
and  Camberwell.  All  Pimlico  and  Westminster  to 
the  north,  to  the  south  all  Battersea  and  Lambeth, 
all  Newington  and  Kennington,  all  Bermondsey  and 
Rotherhithe,  formed  a  vast  lagoon,  broken  only  by 


EARLY  LONDON. 


(Local  nam es  around  of  later  date.) 


Jlijhgate^s 

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little  rises  which  became  the  “eyes”  and  “hithes,” 
the  “islands”  and  “  landing- rises,”  of  later  settle¬ 
ments.  Yet  lower  down  to  the  eastward  the  swamp 
widened  as  the  Lea  poured  its  waters  into  the  Thames 
in  an  estuary  of  its  own — an  estuary  which  ran  far  to 
the  north  over  as  wide  an  expanse  of  marsh  and  fen, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


97 


while  at  its  mouth  it  stretched  its  tidal  waters  over 
the  mud  flats  which  have  been  turned  by  embank¬ 
ment  into  the  Isle  of  Dogs.1  Near  the  point  where 
the  two  rivers  meet,  a  traveller  who  was  mounting 
the  Thames  from  the  sea  saw  the  first  dry  land  to 
which  his  bark  could  steer.  The  spot  was,  in  fact, 
the  extremity  of  a  low  line  of  rising  ground  which 
was  thrown  out  from  the  heights  of  Hampstead 
that  border  the  river-valley  to  the  north,  and  which 
passed  over  the  sites  of  our  Hyde  Park  and  Hol- 
born  to  thrust  itself  on  the  east  into  the  great 
morass.  This  eastern  portion  of  it,  however,  was 
severed  from  the  rest  of  the  rise  by  the  deep  gorge 
of  a  stream  that  fell  from  the  northern  hills,  the 
stream  of  the  Fleet,  whose  waters,  long  since  lost  in 
London  sewers,  ran  in  earlier  days  between  steep 
banks — banks  that  still  leave  their  impress  in  the 
local  levels,  and  in  local  names  like  Snow  Hill  —to 
the  Thames  at  Blackfriars. 

The  rise  or  “  dun  ”  that  stretched  from  this  tidal 
channel  of  the  Fleet  to  the  spot  now  marked  by  the 
Tower,  and  which  was  destined  to  become  the  site 
of  London,  rose  at  its  highest  some  fifty  feet  above 


1  Guest,  “Aulus  Plautius,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxiii.  179.  “When 
the  Romans  under  Aulus  Plautius  came  down  the  Watling  Street 
to  the  neighborhood  of  London,  they  saw  before  them  a  wide  ex¬ 
panse  of  marsh  and  mud  bank,  which  twice  every  day  assumed  the 
character  of  an  estuary  sufficiently  large  to  excuse,  if  not  to  justify, 
the  statement  of  Dion,  that  the  river  there  emptied  itself  into  the 
ocean.  No  dykes  then  retained  the  water  within  certain  limits. 
One  arm  of  this  great  wash  stretched  northward  up  the  valley  of 
the  Lea,  and  the  other  westward  up  the  valley  of  the  Thames.” 
“  The  name  of  London  refers  directly  to  the  marshes,  though  I  can¬ 
not  here  enter  into  a  philological  argument  to  prove  the  fact  ” 
(p.  180). 

7 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500  577. 


Not  a  Brit¬ 
ish  icnvti. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


98 

the  level  of  the  tide,  and  was  broken  into  two  parts 
by  a  ravine  through  which  ran  the  stream  which 
has  since  been  known  as  the  Wallbrook.  Such  a 
position  was  admirably  adapted  for  defence ;  it  was, 
indeed,  almost  impregnable.  Sheltered  to  east  and 
south  by  the  lagoons  of  the  Lea  and  the  Thames, 
guarded  to  westward  by  the  deep  cleft  of  the  Fleet, 
it  saw  stretching  along  its  northern  border  the  broad 
fen  whose  name  has  survived  in  our  modern  Moor- 
gate.  Nor,  as  the  first  point  at  which  merchants 
could  land  from  the  great  river,  was  the  spot  less 
adapted  for  trade.  But  it  was  long  before  the  trader 
found  dwelling  on  its  soil.  Old  as  it  is,  London  is 
far  from  being  one  of  the  oldest  of  British  cities ;  till 
the  coming  of  the  Romans,  indeed,  the  loneliness  of 
its  site  seems  to  have  been  unbroken  by  any  settle¬ 
ment  whatever.  The  “  dun  ”  was,  in  fact,  the  centre 
of  a  vast  wilderness.  Beyond  the  marshes  to  the 
east  lay  the  forest  track  of  Southern  Essex.  Across 
the  lagoon  to  the  south  rose  the  woodlands  of  Syden¬ 
ham  and  Forest  Hill,  themselves  but  advance-guards 
of  the  fastnesses  of  the  Weald.  To  the  north  the 
heights  of  Highgate  and  Hampstead  were  crowned 
with  forest  masses,  through  which  the  boar  and  the 
wild  ox  wandered  without  fear  of  man  down  to  the 
days  of  the  Plantagenets.  Even  the  open  country 
to  the  west  was  but  a  waste.  It  seems  to  have 
formed  the  border-land  between  two  British  tribes 
who  dwelt  in  Hertford  and  in  Essex,  and  its  barren 
clays  were  given  over  to  solitude  by  the  usages  of 
primeval  war.1 

1  Guest,  “  Aulus  Plautius,”  Archseol.  Journal,  xxiii.  167:  “Merely 
a  march  of  the  Catuvellauni,  a  common  through  which  ran  a  wide 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


99 


With  the  coming  of  the  Roman,  however,  this  sol¬ 
itude  passed  away.* 1  We  know  nothing  of  the  set¬ 
tlement  of  the  town ;  but  its  advantages  as  the  first 
landing-place  along  the  Thames  secured  for  it  at 
once  the  command  of  all  trading  intercourse  with 
Gaul,  and  through  Gaul  with  the  empire  at  large.2 
So  rapid  was  its  growth  that  only  a  few  years  after 
the  landing  of  Claudius  London  had  risen  into  a 
flourishing  port,  the  massacre  of  whose  foreign  trad¬ 
ers  was  the  darkest  blot  on  the  British  rising  under 


track-way,  but  in  which  was  neither  town,  village,  nor  inhabited 
house.  No  doubt  the  Catuvellauni  fed  their  cattle  in  the  march, 
and  there  may  have  been  shealings  here  to  shelter  their  herdsmen.” 
“  I  have  little  doubt  that  between  Brockley  Hill  and  the  Thames  all 
was  wilderness  from  the  Lea  to  the  Brent.” 

1  Guest  (“Aulus  Plautius,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxiii.  180)  suggests 
the  Roman  origin  of  London.  “  When  in  the  autumn  of  43  Aulus 
Plautius  drew  the  lines  of  circumvallation  round  his  camp,  I  be¬ 
lieve  he  founded  the  present  metropolis  of  Britain.  The  notion 
entertained  by  some  antiquaries,  that  a  British  town  preceded  the 
Roman  camp,  has  no  foundation  to  rest  upon,  and  is  inconsistent 
with  all  we  know  of  the  early  geography  of  this  part  of  Britain.” 
Much  has  been  made  of  its  name,  but  “  Llyn-dyn,”  or  whatever  the 
Celtic  form  may  be,  is  as  likely  to  be  the  designation  of  a  spot  as  of 
a  town  on  it.  An  almost  conclusive  proof,  however,  that  no  such 
town  existed  west  of  the  Fleet  may  be  drawn  from  the  line  of  the 
old  British  road  from  Kent  (the  predecessor  of  the  Watling  Street), 
which,  instead  of  crossing  the  river,  as  in  Roman  and  later  times,  at 
the  point  marked  by  London  Bridge,  passed,  according  to  Higden, 
to  a  point  opposite  Westminster,  and,  crossing  the  river  there,  struck 
north  along  the  line  of  Park  Lane  and  Edgware  Road  ( Loftie, 
“Roman  London,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxxiv.  165).  Such  a  course 
is  inconsistent  with  the  existence  of  a  town  on  the  site  of  the  later 
London ;  in  fact,  the  rise  of  such  a  town  is  the  best  explanation 
of  the  later  change  in  the  line  of  this  road,  which  brought  about  its 
passage  by  the  bridge. 

2  As  we  have  seen,  vessels  from  Gaul  simply  crossed  the  Channel 
to  Richborough,  and  avoided  the  circuit  of  the  north  Foreland  by 
using  the  channel  of  the  Wantsum,  through  which  they  passed  by 
Reculver  into  the  Thames. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 

Roman 

London. 


IOO 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  hi.  Boadicea.1  But  the  town  soon  recovered  from  the 
conquests  blow.  If  York  became  the  official  capital  of  the 
Saxons,  province,  London  formed  its  actual  centre,  for  by  one 
c  500-577  the  many  advantages  of  its  site  it  was  necessarily 
~  the  point  from  which  the  roads  of  the  conquerors 
radiated  over  the  island.  Such  a  point  would  natu¬ 
rally  have  been  found  at  Richborough,  where  the  line 
of  communication  with  the  body  of  the  empire  passed 
the  Channel  at  its  narrowest  part.  But  Kent,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  shut  in  by  barriers  which  made  com¬ 
munication  with  the  rest  of  the  island  impracticable, 
save  at  the  single  spot  where  the  road,  thus  drawn 
inland  from  Richborough,  found  a  practicable  pas¬ 
sage  over  the  Thames.  And  this  spot  was  at  Lon¬ 
don  ;  for  London  was  the  lowest  ground  on  the  tidal 
waters  of  the  river  on  which  it  was  possible  to  build 
a  bridge ;  and,  even  before  a  bridge  was  built,  it  was 
the  lowest  ground  where  passage  could  be  gained  by 
a  ferry.  But  once  over  the  river,  the  difficulty  of 
divergence  was  removed,  and  it  was  thus  that  roads 
struck  from  London  to  every  quarter  of  Britain.2 
As  the  meeting- point  of  these  roads,  the  point  of 
their  contact  with  the  lines  of  communication  be¬ 
tween  the  province  and  the  Empire,  as  well  as  the 
natural  port  for  the  bulk  of  its  trade,  which  then  lay 

1  For  “  Roman  London,”  we  have  numerous  papers,  especially  in 
the  Archaeologia,  by  Mr.  Wright,  Sir  William  Tite,  Mr.  Taylor,  Mr. 
Black,  and  Mr.  Roach  Smith,  and  a  separate  treatise  by  the  last 
author  on  “  The  Antiquities  of  Roman  London.”  See,  too,  Mr. 
Loftie’s  “Roman  London,”  in  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxxiv.  164. 

2  Roads  such  as  the  Fosse  Road  or  the  Icknield  Way  are  of  earlier 
than  Roman  date  ;  and  their  direction  was  determined  by  very  dif¬ 
ferent  social  and  political  circumstances  from  those  of  Britain  in 
the  Roman  times  (see  Guest,  “Aulus  Plautius,”  Archaeol.  Journal, 
xxiii.  175). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


IOI 


exclusively  with  the  Mediterranean  and  the  Channel,  CHAP- In- 
London  could  not  fail  to  grow  fast  in  population  and  conquests 

,,,  ^  of  the 

wealth.  Saxons. 

From  the  traces  of  burial,  indeed,  which  we  find  c  g~g77 
over  part  of  the  ground,  it  seems  almost  certain  that  ,  —  , 
the  earlier  city  was  far  from  extending  over  the 
whole  of  the  space  embraced  within  the  existing 
Roman  walls.  It  is  possible  that  Londinium  at 
first  only  occupied  the  height  to  the  eastward  of  the 
W allbrook,  which  then  ran  in  a  deep  channel  to  its 
little  port  at  Dowgate,  and  that  its  northern  bound 
was  marked  by  a  trench  whose  memory  survives  in 
the  name  of  our  “  Langbourne  ”  Ward;  while  the 
ground  to  the  westward  as  far  as  the  Fleet  was  still 
open  and  used  for  interments.  But  buildings  soon 
rose  over  the  ground  outside  these  narrow  bounds. 


We  find  traces  of  villas  and  pavements  stretching 
over  the  earlier  grave-grounds ;  and  by  the  close  of 
the  third  century  at  latest  London  had  spread  over 
the  whole  area  of  the  rise  east  of  the  Fleet  between 
the  Thames  and  the  Moor.  It  was  this  London 
that  was  girt  in  by  the  massive  walls  which  were 
probably  raised  by  Theodosius,1  when  the  inroads 
of  the  Piets  and  the  descents  of  the  Saxons  first 


1  The  ease  with  which  the  Frankish  soldiers,  after  the  fall  of  Al- 
lectus,  fell  back  on  and  plundered  London  suggests  that  it  was  then 
without  defence.  The  reign  of  Valentinian  seems  the  most  proba¬ 
ble  date  for  raising  walls  after  this  time  ;  and  the  coins  found  along 
its  course  point  to  the  second  half  of  the  fourth  century.  There 
are  signs,  too,  that  the  wall  was  raised  in  some  haste,  and  under  the 
pressure  of  urgent  necessity ;  for  it  is  carried  over  cemeteries  and  the 
sites  of  existing  houses,  covering  even  their  encaustic  pavements 
in  its  course ;  and  fragments  of  building  and  sculptures  are  found 
worked  into  it. 


102 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iii.  made  walls  necessary  for  the  security  cf  towns  in 
conquests  Britain. 

Saxons.  But  the  city  spread  even  beyond  these  wide 
c  500-577  bounds.  Houses  of  citizens  studded  the  country 
r  ~  around  its  walls,  and  bordered  the  roads  which 

Its  impor-  ...  i 

tance.  struck  westward  along  the  hollow  bourne,  or  Hol- 
born,  and  northward  along  our  Gracechurch  Street. 
Outside  the  walls,  too,  lay  a  ring  of  burial-places  at 
Shoreditch  and  elsewhere ;  while  a  suburb  rose 
across  the  river  on  the  site  of  the  present  Southwark. 
One  of  the  most  laborious  works  of  the  Roman  set¬ 
tlers  was  the  embankment  of  the  lower  channels  of 
the  Thames  and  of  the  Lea ;  and  it  was  on  ground 
thus  gained  from  the  morass  across  the  river  at  our 
Southwark  that  dwellings  clustered  whose  number 
and  wealth  leave  hardly  a  doubt  that  they  were 
already  linked  by  a  bridge  with  the  mother  city.1 
Of  London  itself,  however,  we  know  little.  Tradi¬ 
tion  places  a  temple  of  Diana  on  the  spot  where 
the  Christian  missionaries  raised  in  after -time  the 
Church  of  St.  Paul,  and  here  on  this  higher  ground 
some  statelier  public  buildings  may  have  clustered 
round  it.  But  the  scarcity  of  stone  and  abundance 
of  clay  in  its  neighborhood  were  fatal  to  any  archi¬ 
tectural  pretensions ;  and  from  the  character  of  its 
remains  the  town  seems  to  have  been  little  more 
than  a  mass  of  brick  houses  and  red -tiled  roofs, 

1  “  When  the  foundations  of  the  old  bridge  were  taken  up,  a  line 
of  coins,  ranging  from  the  Republican  period  to  Honorius,  were 
found  in  the  bed  of  the  river.  .  .  .  The  completeness  of  the  series 
can  only  be  accounted  for  on  the  supposition  that  a  bridge,  pre¬ 
ceded,  perhaps,  by  a  rope  or  chain  ferry,  was  very  early  thrown 
across  the  Thames”  (Lottie's  “Roman  London,”  Archaeol.  Journal, 
xxxiv.  172). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


103 


pierced  with  a  net-work  of  the  narrow  alleys  which  CHAP- Iri- 
passed  for  streets  in  the  Roman  world,  and  cleft  conquests 
throughout  its  area  by  two  wider  roads  from  the  Saxons, 
bridge.  One  of  these  led  by  a  gate  near  our  Bish-C .  500I577 
opsgate  to  the  northern  road,  the  other  by  a  line 
which  is  partly  represented  in  our  Cannon  Street  to 
Newgate  and  the  west.  But  if  it  fell  far  beneath 
many  of  the  British  towns  in  its  outer  seeming,  as 
it  fell  beneath  York  in  official  rank,  London  sur¬ 
passed  all  in  population  and  wealth.  Middlesex 
possibly  represents  a  district  which  depended  on  it 
in  this  earlier,  as  it  certainly  did  in  a  later,  time  ;  and 
the  privileges  of  the  chase,  which  its  citizens  enjoyed 
throughout  the  Middle  Ages  in  the  woodland  that 
covered  the  heights  of  Hampstead  and  along  the 
southern  bank  of  the  river  as  far  as  the  Cray,  may 
have  been  drawn  from  the  rights  of  the  Roman 
burghers. 

In  the  downfall  of  the  Imperial  rule,  such  a  town  London 
would  doubtless  gain  a  virtual  independence ;  but  invaders. 
through  the  darkness  of  the  time  we  catch  only  a 
passing  glimpse  of  its  life,  when  the  Britons,  after 
their  rout  at  Crayford,  fled  from  the  Jutes  to  find 
shelter  at  “  Lundenbyryg.” 1  Its  power,  however,  was 
seen  in  the  arrest  of  the  invaders  as  they  neared  its 
southern  suburb ;  for  the  western  border  of  Kent 
represents,  no  doubt,  fairly  enough  the  point  at  which 
the  Londoners  were  able  to  hold  the  “Cant-wara” 
at  bay  on  the  edge  of  the  morass  that  stretched 
from  Southwark  to  the  Dulwich  hills.  Hardly  were 
these  southern  assailants  brought  to  a  standstill  when 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  457. 


104 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iii.  London  must  have  had  to  struggle  against  assailants 
conquests  on  the  northern  bank  of  the  river.  Here,  however, 

Saxons,  the  attack  was  probably  a  fainter  one.  Not  only 
„  500I577  was  the  line  of  forest  and  marsh  along  the  lower 
—  channel  of  the  Lea  impenetrable,  but  the  woodland 
and  mud  flats  of  Southern  Essex  offered  little  temp¬ 
tation  to  the  settlers  who  might  have  pressed  for¬ 
ward  in  this  quarter.  The  energies  of  the  East 
Saxons  were,  in  fact,  long  drawn  elsewhere  ;  for  their 
settlements  lay  mainly  in  the  north  of  the  district  to 
which  they  gave  their  name,  where  a  clearer  and 
more  fertile  country  offered  them  homes  in  the  val¬ 
leys  of  the  Colne  and  the  Stour ;  and  even  here 
their  numbers  must  have  been  too  small  to  push  in¬ 
land,  for  half  a  century  seems  to  have  elapsed  after 
their  first  settlement  before  they  were  strong  enough 
to  advance  from  the  coast  into  the  interior  of  the 
island. 

Fail  of  When  the  time  came  for  such  an  advance,  it  lay 

Verula-  #  J 

mium.  naturally  up  the  river-valleys  in  which  they  had  set¬ 
tled  ;  and  these  led  through  thinner  woodland  to  a 
point  in  the  downs  where  Saffron  Walden  still 
marks  an  open  “  dene  ”  that  broke  the  thickets  of  the 
waste  or  “  Weald.”  Once  on  these  downs,  the  East 
Saxons  found  themselves  encamped  on  the  central 
uplands  of  the  line  of  chalk  heights  whose  extremi¬ 
ties  had  already  been  seized  by  their  brethren  in 
Berkshire,  and  by  the  Engle  in  the  eastern  counties. 
Though  the  tract  was  traversed  by  the  great  road 
which  ran  across  Mid-Britain  from  London  to  Ches¬ 
ter,  the  road  to  which  the  English  gave  its  later 
name  of  Watling  Street,  it  was  a  wild  and  lonely 
region,  whose  woodlands,  even  in  the  days  of  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


105 


Norman  kings,  made  travel  through  it  a  dangerous 
business.1  At  this  time  it  probably  formed  the  dis¬ 
trict  of  Verulamium,  a  town  which  stood  near  the 
site  of  the  present  St.  Albans.  Verulamium  was 
one  of  the  oldest  towns  in  Britain ;  and,  in  spite  of 
the  wild  tract  in  which  it  stood,  its  position  on  the 
main  road  from  London  across  Mid-Britain  gave  it 
a  wealth  and  importance  which  are  still  witnessed  by 
the  traces  of  an  amphitheatre,  the  extent  of  its  walls, 
and  the  expanse  of  ruins  from  which  the  abbey  and 
abbey-church  of  later  days  were  mainly  construct¬ 
ed.  Since  Christianity  had  become  the  religion  of 
the  Empire,  it  had  won  celebrity  as  the  scene  of  the 
martyrdom  of  a  Christian  soldier,  Alban,  who  was 
said  to  have  suffered  under  Diocletian,  and  whose 
church  was  a  centre  of  Christian  devotion.2  But 
neither  its  wealth  nor  its  sanctity  saved  it  from  the 
invaders.  Its  fall  was  complete ;  and  for  centuries 
to  come  the  broken  and  charred  remains  of  the  town 
were  left  in  solitude  without  inhabitants.3 

The  fall  of  Verulamium,  and  the  settlement  of  its 
conquerors  in  the  downs  about  it,  must  have  fallen 
on  London  as  a  presage  of  ruin.  A  hundred  years 


*  Guest,  “  Four  Roman  Ways,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xiv.  114. 

a  Gildas,  Hist.  cap.  10 ;  Boeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  7. 

3  Our  only  guides  to  the  date  of  the  conquest  of  Hertfordshire 
are  the  date  of  the  earlier  conquest  of  Essex,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
can  hardly  have  been  long  before  a.d.  500,  and  that  of  the  fall  of 
Verulamium.  That  Verulamium  had  fallen  before  560  is  shown  by 
the  lament  over  its  ruin  in  Gildas  (Hist.  sec.  10) ;  but  its  fall  can 
hardly  have  been  much  earlier.  The  bounds  of  the  diocese  of  Lon¬ 
don,  which  represent  the  kingdom  of  Essex,  show  that  the  Hert¬ 
fordshire  men  were  part  of  the  East  Saxons.  The  present  shire  of 
Hertford,  however,  is  far  from  coinciding  in  its  limits  with  those  of 
the  East-Saxon  realm  or  diocese. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


Fall  of 
London. 


io6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

charhi.  had  passed  away  since  Hengest’s  men  had  fallen 
conquests  back  baffled  from  its  neighborhood  ;  and  in  the  lone 

of  the  .  .  °  o 

Saxons,  interval  its  burghers  may  have  counted  themselves 
o.  50ol577.  safe  from  attack.  But  year  by  year  the  circle  of  in- 
vasion  had  been  closing  round  the  city.  The  con¬ 
quest  of  Kent  had  broken  its  communications  with 
the  Continent,  and  whatever  trade  might  struggle 
from  the  southern  coast  through  the  Weald  had 
been  cut  off  by  the  conquest  of  Sussex.  That  of 
the  Gwent  about  Winchester  closed  the  road  to  the 
southwest,  while  the  capture  of  Cunetio  interrupted 
all  communication  with  the  valley  of  the  Severn  and 
the  rich  country  along  its  estuary.  And  now  the 
occupation  of  Hertfordshire  cut  off  the  city  from 
Northern  and  Central  Britain,  for  it  was  over  these 
chalk  uplands  that  the  Watling  Street  struck  across 
the  central  plain  to  Chester  and  the  northwest,  and 
it  was  through  Verulamium  that  travellers  bent 
round  the  forest  block  above  London  on  their  way 
to  the  north.  Only  along  the  Thames  itself  could 
London  maintain  any  communication  with  what  re¬ 
mained  of  Britain ;  and  even  this  communication 
must  have  been  threatened  as  the  invaders  crept 
down  the  slopes  from  the  north  through  the  wood¬ 
land  which  crowned  the  rises  of  Hampstead  and 
Highgate,  or  descended  by  the  valleys  of  the  Brent 
and  the  Colne  on  the  tract  which  retains  their  name 
of  Middle-Sexe.  The  settlers  in  this  district,  indeed, 
seem  to  have  been  unimportant,  and  the  walls  of  the 
great  city  were  still  strong  enough  to  defy  any  di¬ 
rect  attack.  But  when  once  the  invading  force  had 
closed  fairly  round  it,  London,  like  its  fellow-towns, 
must  have  yielded  to  the  stress  of  a  long  blockade. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


107 


Although  no  record  remains  of  its  capture  or  sur-  chap.  m- 
render,1  the  course  of  events  seems  to  give  the  date  conquests 
of  its  fall  pretty  clearly.  It  was  certainly  in  English  Saxons, 
hands  by  the  opening  of  the  seventh  century;2  and c  5^577. 
its  fall  is  the  one  event  which  would  account  for  a 
movement  of  the  Kentishmen  which  we  find  taking 
place,  at  the  moment  which  we  have  reached,  along 
the  southern  bank  of  the  Thames.3 

Since  the  death  of  Hengest,  the  kingdom  of  Kent  Kent. 
had  played  no  direct  part  in  the  conquest  of  Britain. 

Jutes  had,  indeed,  mastered  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and 
Jutish  houses  had  joined  the  Saxon  war  bands  in 
their  winning  of  Southern  Britain;  but  the  Jutish 
kingdom  itself  had  rested  quietly  within  its  earlier 
limits  between  the  Channel  and  the  Thames.  Under 
the  great-grandson  of  Hengest,  however,  yEthel- 
berht,  who  was  born  in  the  year  of  the  fall  of  Sor- 
biodunum,  and  who  mounted  its  throne  as  a  child  a 
little  later,  it  again  came  boldly  to  the  front.4  Narrow 


1  “  Good  reasons  may  be  given  for  the  belief  that  even  London 
itself  for  a  while  lay  desolate  and  uninhabited”  (Guest,  “Conquest 
of  Severn  Valley,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xix.  217). 

2  In  604  it  was  in  the  hands  of  King  Saeberct  of  Essex  :  “  Orienta- 
lium  Saxonum  .  .  .  quorum  metropolis  Lundonia  civitas  est  ”  (Baeda, 
Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3).  And  it  passed  into  those  of  his  sons  (ibid.  ii.  5). 

3  The  settlers  in  the  district  west  of  London  are  known  after¬ 
wards  as  the  Middle  Saxons.  But  that  they  were  only  an  offshoot 
of  the  East  Saxons  is  clear  from  the  fact  that,  with  London,  they 
always  belonged  to  the  kingdom  of  Essex,  and  that  Middlesex  still 
forms  a  part  of  the  East-Saxon  bishopric  of  London. 

4  The  date  of  Hithelberht’s  birth  is  given  in  the  English  Chron¬ 
icle,  a.  552  (in  the  late  Canterbury  copy).  Baeda  says  that  at  his 
death,  in  616,  “regnum  .  .  .  quinquaginta  et  sex  annis  gloriosissime 
tenuerat  ”  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5),  which  fixes  his  accession  in  560.  He 
was  thus  only  eight  years  old  when  he  became  king,  and  sixteen 
when  he  fought  at  Wimbledon. 


io8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

chap^iii.  as  were  its  bounds,  indeed,  Kent  equalled  in  political 
conquests  power  the  wider  realms  which  were  forming  about 
Saxons,  it-  It  remained,  as  of  old,  one  of  the  wealthiest  and 
c.  500^577.  most  flourishing  parts  of  Britain.  The  ruin  of  Hen- 
gest’s  wars  had  been  in  some  part  repaired  by  the 
peace  which  had  existed  since  its  conquest  a  hun¬ 
dred  years  ago  ;  for  while  the  Gwent  and  the  Thames 
valley  were  still  being  wasted  with  fight  and  ravage, 
the  Cant-wara  were  settling  quietly  down  into  busy 
husbandmen  along  its  coast,  or  on  its  downs,  or  in 
the  fertile  bottoms  of  the  river -valleys  that  cleft 
them.  It  was  a  sign  of  this  tranquillity  that  the 
district  had,  even  before  yEthelberht’s  day,  resumed 
that  intercourse  with  the  Continent  which  the  de¬ 
scent  of  the  Jutes  had  for  a  while  broken  off;  and 
that  only  a  few  years  later  we  find  men  versed  in 
the  English  tongue,  the  result  of  a  commerce  which 
must  have  again  sprung  to  life  ready  at  hand  in  the 
ports  of  Gaul.1 

Ketit  and  With  wealth  and  strength  drawn  from  a  century 
of  peace,  as  well  as  with  the  pride  which  it  drew 
from  the  memory  of  its  earlier  share  in  the  conquest 
of  Britain,  Kent  hardly  needed  any  other  stimulus 
to  nerve  it  to  efforts  for  a  wider  sway.  But  when 
yEthelberht  looked  out  from  his  petty  realm  with 
dreams  of  sharing  in  the  general  advance  of  his  race, 
the  boy-king  found  himself  shut  in  on  every  side 
save  one  by  English  ground.  To  the  southwest  lay 
Sussex  and  the  Andredsweald;  to  the  north,  over  the 
Thames,  lay  the  land  of  the  East  Saxons ;  and  only 
directly  to  the  west,  between  the  north  downs  and 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


109 


the  Thames,  did  any  tract  of  British  country  offer  CHAP- Iir- 
itself  to  his  arms.  In  this  quarter  the  Jutes  had  conquests 
been  baffled  for  a  hundred  years  by  the  barriers  in  saxonl 
their  way,  by  the  wooded  fastnesses  of  the  Dulwich  c .  5(^I577> 
heights,  the  tangled  swamp  which  stretched  from 
these  heights  to  the  Thames,  and  the  forces  which 
would  pour  from  London  across  its  bridge  to  the 
suburb  that  occupied  the  site  of  the  future  South¬ 
wark.  From  the  line  of  the  Medway  the  West- 
Kentish  warriors  had  crept  forward  along  the  strip 
of  shore  between  Blackheath  and  the  Thames,  past 
Woolwich  and  Greenwich,  to  the  edge  of  this  mo¬ 
rass ;  but  here  the  border-line  of  Kent  marks  the 
limit  of  their  advance.  Nothing  but  the  fall  of  the 
great  city  could  remove  the  hindrance  from  their 
path;  and  we  can  hardly  err  in  believing  that  it  was 
the  capture  of  London  by  the  East  Saxons  which  at 
last  enabled  the  J  utes  to  force  their  way  across  the 
border,  and  to  march  in  568  on  the  tract  to  the 
west.1 

But  yEthelberht  had  hardly  struggled  through  the  Wests™ r- 
marshes  and  entered  on  this  long- coveted  district  s'llhester. 
when  his  progress  was  again  roughly  barred.  He 
found  himself  face  to  face,  not  with  the  British,  but 
with  an  English  foe ;  for  the  conquests  of  the  West 
Saxons  had  brought  them,  as  we  have  seen,  to  the 
western  extremity  of  the  very  tract  on  which  yEthel- 
berht  was  advancing  from  the  east.  Their  overrun¬ 
ning  of  Berkshire  and  the  Marlborough  Downs  had 
carried  them  to  the  border  of  the  Thames  valley, 
and  the  course  of  the  great  river  led  them  forward 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  568. 


I  IO 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iii.  to  the  country  along  its  banks.  Only  one  obstacle 
conquests  lay  in  their  path.  Of  the  ring  of  fortresses  that  en- 
Saxons.  closed  the  Gwent,  Calleva  Atrebatum,  the  modern 
c.  500-577.  Silchester,  which  stood  on  the  edge  of  the  upland 
where  the  roads  from  Winchester  and  Old  Sarum 
united  on  their  way  to  London,  alone  remained  in 


British  hands.  Silchester1  presented  a  marked  con¬ 
trast  to  the  towns  which  the  Gewissas  had  as  yet  at¬ 
tacked.  The  fortresses  of  the  Saxon  Shore  had 
been  built  simply  as  fortresses,  and  their  small  walled 
citadels  stood  apart  from  the  general  mass  of  habita- 


1  For  Silchester,  see  paper  by  Mr.  Joyce,  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxx. 


io. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  I  I 


tions  near  them.  In  towns  such  as  York,  on  the  chap.  m. 
other  hand,  we  see  the  first  military  settlement  of  conquests 
the  Roman  conquest  rising  within  the  earlier  walls,  Saxons, 
but  at  last  so  utterly  outgrowing  them  that  the  bulkc  5^577 
of  the  town  lay  in  undefended  suburbs,  and  the  walled  — 
city  contained  little  more  than  the  quarters  of  troops 
and  officials.  Silchester  belongs  to  neither  of  these 
classes.  Originally  the  seat  of  a  British  tribe,  its 
position  in  the  heart  of  the  island  had  deprived  it  of 
any  military  importance  during  the  earlier  ages  of 
the  Roman  occupation,  while  it  sheltered  the  town 
from  the  border  forays  that  alone  broke  the  Roman 
peace.  It  was  not  till  the  decay  of  the  Empire 
brought  trouble  at  last  to  its  gates  that  inland  towns, 
such  as  Calleva,  were  compelled  to  seek  shelter  in  a 
ring  of  walls,  and  within  these  walls  the  whole  town 
was  naturally  enclosed.  It  is  this  cause  which  ac¬ 
counts  for  the  disproportion  between  the  walled  area 
of  one  town  and  another  in  Roman  Britain,  between 
the  few  acres  enclosed  by  the  walls  of  York  and  the 
space  enclosed  by  the  walls  of  Silchester  or  London. 

The  circuit  of  the  walls  of  Silchester  is  about  three 
miles  round  ;  and  their  irregular  and  polygonal  form, 
if  we  compare  it  with  the  regular  quadrangle  of 
Richborough  or  Lincoln,  shows  that  Calleva  was  a 
fortified  city,  and  not  a  city  which  had  grown  up 
within  or  around  a  fortress.  Mutilated  and  broken 
down  as  it  is,  the  wall,  with  the  wide  ditch  that  still 
partially  encircles  it,  enables  us  to  realize  the  mili¬ 
tary  strength  of  the  town.  In  the  midst  of  its  net¬ 
work  of  narrow  streets  lay  a  central  forum,  round 
which  stood  the  public  offices  and  principal  shops  of 
the  place ;  while  one  side  was  wholly  occupied  by  a 


I  12 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  hi.  huge  basilica,  or  justice-hall,  whose  central  nave  was 
conquests  sustained  by  two  rows  of  stately  Corinthian  pillars, 
saxonl  and  closed  at  each  end  by  a  lordly  apse.  Remains 
c  500-577  such  as  these  show  that  the  Roman  tradition  was 
—  still  strong  among  the  citizens  of  Calleva ;  and  it  may 
have  been  with  the  Roman  eagle  at  their  head,  and 
in  the  Roman  order,  that  its  men  marched  against 
the  West  Saxons.  But  all  was  in  vain.  We  know 
nothing  of  the  rout  of  the  burghers,  or  of  the  siege 
and  ruin  of  their  town.  It  is  only  the  discovery  of 
a  legionary  eagle,  hidden  away,  as  it  would  seem,  in 
some  secret  recess,  and  there  buried  for  ages  be¬ 
neath  the  charred  wreck  of  one  of  its  houses,  that 
tells  its  own  pathetic  tale  of  the  fall  of  Silchester.1 
Battle  of  The  fall  of  this  city  opened  to  the  West  Saxons 

Wimble-  ,  .  .  .  .  . 

don.  the  road  to  the  west.  By  its  capture  they  had,  in 
fact,  turned  the  flank  of  the  Andredsweald.  The 
impenetrable  tract  whose  scrub  and  forest  and  clay 
bottoms  had  so  long  held  the  assailants  of  Southern 
Britain  at  bay  lay  between  the  two  lines  of  chalk 
uplands,  the  south  downs  and  the  north  downs, 
which  diverged  from  the  Gwent,  on  which  the  West 
Saxons  had  stood  so  long.  But  the  capture  of  Cal¬ 
leva  brought  them  fairly  round  the  extremity  of  the 
Andredsweald,  and  opened  for  them  the  tract  that 
lay  between  the  north  downs  and  the  Thames. 
From  Silchester  a  road  led  through  the  heart  of  this 
tract  to  the  south  of  the  Bearrocwood,  which  filled 
the  bend  of  the  river  about  Windsor,  traversed  the 
wild  heaths  of  Bagshot — then,  as  for  ages  later,  a 
lonely  stretch  of  heather  and  sand — and,  dipping  into 


1  Joyce,  “  Silchester,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xxx.  25. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  13 


the  marshes  that  still  leave  their  trace  on  the  see-  CHAP-  wi¬ 
nery  about  Weybridge,  pushed  through  the  thick  conquests 
woodlands  which  hid  the  gentle  windings  of  the  Saxons, 
lower  Mole1  till  it  reached  a  little  town  which  oc-c  5^577 
cupied  the  site  of  our  Kingston.2  Here  the  road  — 
crossed  the  Thames  by  a  ferry,  to  strike  along  its 
northern  bank  towards  London ;  and  that  the  West 
Saxons  made  no  attempt  to  follow  its  course  across 
the  river  adds  force  to  the  supposition  that  the  city 
and  the  district  about  it  were  already  in  English 
hands.3  But  even  in  the  country  between  the 
Thames  and  the  downs  their  way  was  barred  by 
an  English  rival.  Right  in  their  path,  as  they  lay 
at  Kingston,  stretched  the  low  rise  of  a  broad,  open 
heath,  which  extended  from  the  river’s  brink  at  Put¬ 
ney4  to  the  height  or  dun  which  was  to  be  known 
from  some  later  settler  as  Wibba’s  dun,  or  Wimble¬ 
don.  The  heath  was  studded  with  barrows  that 
marked  it  as  the  scene  of  earlier  conflicts ;  and  an 
older  entrenchment,  which  covered  seven  acres  of  its 
surface,  may  have  been  occupied  by  the  forces  under 
/Ethelberht.  But  a  century  of  peace  had  left  the 
Jutes  no  match  for  veterans  who  were  fresh  from  the 
long  strife  about  the  Gwent.  The  encounter  of  568 
was  memorable  as  the  first  fight  of  Englishmen  with 

o  o 


1  The  local  names  show  how  thickly  this  district  was  wooded. 

2  Numerous  remains  have  been  found,  which  prove  that  a  Roman 
station  existed  at  Kingston. 

3  That  they  had  no  objection  to  crossing  the  river  in  itself  is  clear 
from  the  fact  that  they  crossed  it  but  a  few  years  later  into  the  ter¬ 
ritory  of  the  Four  Towns.  This  was  British  soil ;  and  had  our 
Middlesex  been  British  soil,  they  would  as  naturally  have  crossed 
at  Kingston. 

*  The  older  form  of  this  name,  Putten-heath,  tells  its  own  tale. 

8 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


1 14 

chap^iii.  Englishmen  on  British  soil ; 1  but  the  day  went 
Conquests  against  the  young  Kentish  king :  his  army  was 
Saxons,  thrown  back  across  the  Wandle  on  its  own  border, 
c.  500^577.  and  the  disputed  district,  the  Surrey  of  after-days, 
became  from  that  moment  a  land  of  the  West 
Saxons. 

T Townie  Only  one  portion  of  the  Thames  valley  now  re¬ 

mained  in  British  hands,  the  tract  along  its  northern 
bank  from  the  Chilterns  to  the  Cotswolds ;  and  it 
was  into  the  heart  of  this  district  that  the  West- 
Saxons  penetrated  as  soon  as  they  had  mastered 
Surrey.  Close  over  against  their  settlements  in 
Berkshire  lay  a  region  which  was  subject  to  four 
British  towns,  now  known  to  us  only  by  their  later 
names  of  Eynsham,  Bensington,  Aylesbury,  and  Len- 
borough,  the  last  of  these  a  small  hamlet  near  the 
present  Buckingham.2  The  district  comprised,  in 
fact,  the  valleys  of  the  Thame  and  the  Cherwell,  as 
well  as  of  a  few  streams  yet  further  to  the  westward, 
such  as  the  Woodrush,  the  Evenlode,  and  the  Lech ; 
while  to  northward  it  stretched  across  the  bounds 
of  the  Thames  basin  into  the  basin  of  the  Wash,  and 
reached  in  a  narrow  strip  to  the  Ouse.  It  lay  within 
a  natural  framework  of  river  and  woodland  that 
marked  it  off  from  the  rest  of  Britain.  On  the  east¬ 
ern  side  ran  the  escarpment  of  the  Chilterns,  whose 
chalk  downs  were  covered  with  scrub  and  brush¬ 
wood  as  well  as  broken  with  deep  bottoms,  which 
made  them  for  hundreds  of  years  to  come  almost 
impenetrable  to  an  army,  and  which  effectually  shel¬ 
tered  this  tract  from  any  aggression  on  the  part  of 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  568. 


5  E.  Chron.  a.  571. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


1 15 

the  Middle  Saxons.  To  the  west,  between  the  dis¬ 
trict  of  the  Four  Towns  and  the  slopes  of  the  Cots- 
wolds,  ran  a  line  of  woodlands  and  marshes  that 
have  left  their  traces  in  Wychwood  and  Canbury 
Forest,  and  in  the  tangled  and  difficult  channels  of 
the  streams  which  drain  them.  These  lines  of  de¬ 
fence  drew  together  to  the  northward,  and  were 
linked  by  the  woodlands  about  Towcester  and  the 
marshy  meadows  of  the  Ouse  ;  while  along  the  south¬ 
ern  border  of  the  district  ran  the  Thames,  then  a 
deeper  and  more  rapid  river  than  now,  guarded 
from  near  the  site  of  the  present  Oxford  to  that  of 
Abingdon  by  almost  impenetrable  woods,  and  along 
the  bend  from  Goring  to  Henley  by  the  fastness  of 
the  Chiltern  hills. 

As  one  looks  westward  from  the  Chilterns  now¬ 
adays  over  Aylesbury  Vale,  the  district  of  the  Four 
Towns  stretches  away  in  undulating  reaches  of  green 
meadow-land,  dotted  with  hamlets  and  homesteads 
that  nestle  beneath  copses  and  tree-clumps,  the  clay 
bottom  of  some  primeval  sea  out  of  which  low  lifts 
of  oolite  rise  at  Aylesbury  and  Brill.  Then,  as  now, 
the  country  was  fertile  and  well  peopled.  The  river 
Thame,  which  flows  through  the  heart  of  it,  gathers 
its  waters  from  the  Chiltern  slopes,  and,  running 
westward  till  it  passes  the  little  town  to  which  it 
gives  its  name,  turns  from  that  point  abruptly  to 
the  south  by  Chalgrove  Field  to  the  Thames.  On 
the  upper  waters  of  the  stream  lay  a  town  which  is 
represented  by  our  Aylesbury,  crowning  with  the 
church,  or  Eglwys,1  to  which  it  possibly  owed  its 

1  Another  derivation  is  from  /Egil,  the  sun-archer  of  Teutonic 
mythology. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


Their  dis¬ 
tricts. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  16 

chaR- 1 1 1.  English  name,  a  low  rise  of  oolite  that  commanded 
conquests  the  district  from  the  base  of  the  Chilterns  as  far  as 
Saxons,  the  town  of  Thame.  A  line  running  close  beside 
c.  500-577.  Thame  marks  the  present  shire  line  between  Buck¬ 
ingham  and  Oxfordshire,  as  it  may  then  have  marked 
the  boundary  between  the  territory  that  owned  the 
rule  of  Aylesbury  and  that  which  owned  the  rule  of 
Bensington.  The  district  of  this  last  town  would 
thus  comprise  the  lower  valley  of  the  Thame,  with 
the  country  along  the  Thames,  into  which  it  falls, 
from  the  edge  of  the  Chilterns  to  its  bend  north¬ 
ward  towards  Oxford,  and  would  cover  much  the 
same  ground  as  the  southeastern  portion  of  the 
present  Oxfordshire.  The  western  portion  of  the 
same  county  seems  to  be  coextensive  with  the  dis¬ 
trict  of  Eynsham,  the  country  of  the  Cherwell  val¬ 
ley  from  Banbury  to  Oxford,  a  district  bounded 
westward  by  the  woods  and  marshes  of  the  present 
Gloucestershire  border,  parted  from  that  of  Bensing¬ 
ton  perhaps  by  the  rise  of  Shotover,  and  touching 
the  districts  of  Aylesbury  and  Buckingham  to  the 
east  in  an  irregular  line,  of  which  Brill  may  have 
been  an  outpost.  The  district  of  Lenborough  or 
Buckingham,  which  lay  along  the  Ouse  to  the  north 
of  its  three  confederates,  possibly  reached  eastward 
as  far  as  the  quiet  meadows  of  Cowper's  Olney  and 
the  limits  of  Bedford,  and  was  bounded  in  other  di¬ 
rections  by  the  territories  of  Towcester  and  Ayles¬ 
bury.1 


1  I  have  been  guided,  in  tracing  these  boundaries,  by  the  lie  of  the 
ground  itself,  and  what  we  know  of  its  natural  features  at  this  time, 
as  well  as  by  the  limits  of  the  actual  shires.  But  a  more  careful 
examination  of  the  local  “  dykes,”  etc.,  is  needed  before  one  can 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


ii  7 

It  was  from  the  south  that  the  West  Saxons  struck  chap.  ni. 
this  country  of  the  Four  Towns.  The  conquests  of  Conquests 
Cynric  had  planted  them,  as  we  have  seen,  on  the  Saxons. 
Ilsley  and  Marlborough  Downs ;  in  other  words,  on  c  5(^577 
the  westernmost  portion  of  the  chalk  range  that,  — 
starting  from  the  Gwent  of  Hampshire,  runs  by  icknield 
these  downs  and  the  Chil terns  to  the  uplands  of  ,V°' 
East  Anglia.  Along  the  base  of  the  slopes  in  which 
this  range  fronts  the  lower  country  to  the  north  ran 
one  of  the  earliest  lines  of  British  communication. 

Its  name  of  the  Icknield  Way  connects  this  road 
with  the  Iceni,  whom  the  Romans  found  settled  in 
our  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  and  points  back  to  days 
in  which  this  tribe  stood  supreme  in  Southeastern 
Britain,  and  when  the  road  served  as  their  line  of 
traffic  and  of  military  communication  with  the  Gwent 
of  Hampshire  and  the  mining  district  of  Cornwall.1 
Seldom  climbing  to  the  crest  of  the  down,  and  equal¬ 
ly  avoiding  the  deep  bottoms  beneath  the  slopes  of 
the  escarpment,  its  course  recalls  a  time  when  the 
wayfarer  shrank  equally  from  the  dangers  of  the 
open  country  and  from  the  thickets  and  marshes 
which  made  the  lower  grounds  all  but  impassable. 


arrive  at  more  than  probable  conclusions  on  the  subject.  It  is 
needful,  too,  to  bear  in  mind  that  the  shires  of  this  district  probably 
owe  their  actual  form  to  administrative  arrangements  of  the  tenth 
century ;  and  that  though  they  may  have  preserved  the  boundaries 
of  older  tribal  divisions,  they  do  not  everywhere  exactly  coincide 
with  them.  Thus,  part  of  the  present  Hertfordshire,  as  the  dio¬ 
cesan  limits  show,  belonged  originally  to  the  district  of  the  Four 
Towns,  and  remained  West  Saxon  till  the  establishment  of  the 
Danelagh.  Bedfordshire,  again,  is  made  up  of  more  than  the  dis¬ 
trict  of  the  “  Bedecanford  ”  of  Cuthwulf’s  day. 

1  For  the  Icknield  Way,  see  Guest,  “  Four  Roman  Ways,”  Archaeol. 
Journal,  xiv.  109. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


Battle  of 
Bedford. 


u8  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

The  road  long  remained  one  of  the  main  thorough¬ 
fares  of  the  island  ;  pilgrims  from  the  west  traversed 
it  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  on  their  way  to  the 
shrine  of  St.  Edmund  at  Bury;  and  but  two  cen¬ 
turies  ago  lines  of  pack-horses  carried  along  it  bales 
of  woollen  goods  from  the  manufacturing  towns  of 
the  eastern  counties. 

It  was  along  the  Icknield  Way,  therefore,  that  the 
West  Saxons  would  naturally  have  pushed  into  the 
heart  of  the  island.  But  their  advance  had  been 
brought  to  a  standstill  by  a  sudden  gap  in  the  line 
of  heights — the  gap  through  which  the  Thames,  turn¬ 
ing  abruptly  to  the  south,  cuts  its  way  through  the 
downs  to  its  lower  valley  and  the  sea.  It  was  this 
obstacle  of  the  great  river  which  had  bent  them  to 
their  march  along  its  southern  bank  and  their  con¬ 
quest  of  Surrey.  But  Surrey  once  won,  their  ad¬ 
vance  along  the  line  of  the  chalk  downs  was  re¬ 
sumed  ;  and  the  barrier  of  the  river  was  forced  at  a 
spot  whose  name  preserves  for  us  the  memory  of 
the  invaders.  Just  before  the  Thames  enters  the 
gap  beneath  the  Chilterns,  the  Icknield  Way  crossed 
it  by  a  ford,  which  was  recognized  for  a  thousand 
years  as  the  main  pass  across  the  river.  Here  prob¬ 
ably  the  Romans  first  crossed  into  Mid-Britain,  and 
it  was  by  the  same  point  that  the  Norman  con¬ 
queror  made  his  way  after  Hastings  into  the  heart 
of  the  island.  With  the  single  exception,  indeed,  of 
Halliford,  near  the  Conway  Stakes,  this  was  the  low¬ 
est  point  in  its  course  in  which  the  Thames,  under 
its  then  tidal  conditions,  could  be  forded  at  all.1  It 

1  Guest,  “Campaign  of  Aulus  Plautius,”  Archseol.  Journal,  xxiii. 
163,  165,  175. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  19 

was  by  this  ford,  the  Wallingford,  or  Ford  of  the  chap.  m. 
Wealhas1  or  Welshmen,  as  the  conquerors  called  it,  conquests 
that  the  West  Sexe  must  have  passed  the  river  in  sasons. 
57 1.2  Their  leader  was  Cuthwulf,  another  son  ofc  50^T577. 
Cynric,  a  brother  of  Ceawlin  and  Cutha,  eager,  it  — 
may  be,  to  rival  the  achievements  of  his  father  and 
brother  in  war.  Of  the  events  of  this  campaign, 
however,  we  know  but  one,  the  battle  with  which  it 
closed.  From  the  spot  at  which  it  was  fought,  it 
seems  as  if  Cuthwulfs  raid  had  carried  him  from 
Wallingford  by  the  Icknield  Way  along  the  western 
slope  of  the  Chil terns  as  far  as  Bedford  before  the 
forces  of  the  Four  Towns  could  gather  at  the  news 
of  the  foray,  intercept  him  as  he  fell  back  from  the 
valley  of  the  Ouse,  and  force  him  to  an  engagement.3 
But  whatever  were  the  circumstances  which  brought 
about  the  battle,  victory  fell,  as  of  old,  to  the  free¬ 
booters,  and  the  success  of  Cuthwulfs  men  was  fol¬ 
lowed  by  the  ruin  of  the  Four  Towns  of  the  league. 

The  last  raid  of  the  West  Saxons  had  brouqht  Halt  of 

•  •  •  ^  West  Sax 

them  to  the  verge  of  Mid-Britain.  That  they  paused  om. 
at  this  point  in  their  advance  to  the  north,  and  that 
the  upper  Ouse  at  Bedford  remained  the  boundary 
of  their  conquests  in  this  quarter,  may  probably  be 
explained,  like  their  previous  turning -away  from 
London,  by  the  fact  that  the  country  which  they 
had  reached  was  already  in  the  hands  of  English- 


1  It  was  by  this  name,  which  means  “ strangers,”  or  “unintelli¬ 
gible  people,”  that  the  English  knew  the  Britons;  and  it  is  the 
name  by  which  the  Britons,  oddly  enough,  now  know  themselves. 

2  “  The  name  of  the  earlier  conquerors  still  lives  in  the  neighbor¬ 
ing  Englefield  ”  (Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  iii.  542). 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  571  ;  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  71. 


I  20 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iii.  men.  No  written  record,  indeed,  fixes  the  dates  of 
conquests  the  winning  of  Central  Britain ;  but  the  halt  of 
Saxons.  Cuthwulf  is  a  significant  one.  In  the  years  that 
c.  500I577. followed  the  victory  of  571  the  West  Saxons  must 
have  spread  over  the  country  they  had  won,  over  an 
area  which  roughly  corresponds  to  that  of  the  shires 


of  Oxford,  Bedford,  and  Bucks.  To  the  eastward, 
therefore,  their  settlements  were  pushed  along  the 
clay  flats  of  the  upper  Ouse,  along  the  valley  which 
lies  between  the  chalk  ranges  of  the  Chilterns  and 
the  oolitic  upland  of  our  Northamptonshire.  On 
the  Chilterns,  as  we  know,  the  East  Saxons  had  for 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  2  I 


some  while  been  settled  about  Hertford ;  but  that  chap.  hi. 
the  West  Sexe  made  no  effort  to  push  further  to  the  conquests 
east  can  only  be  explained  by  the  presence  of  other  s°afXons. 
Englishmen  in  that  quarter.  No  natural  obstacles,.  5^T577 
arrested  their  march  along  the  Ouse ;  neither  forest  — 
nor  hill  forced  them  to  halt  at  the  point  in  its  course 
which  is  marked  by  the  little  town  of  St.  Neots,  or 
to  draw  their  border-line  from  it  along  such  lines  as 
the  little  stream  of  the  Kym.1  We  can  only  account 
for  such  a  halt  by  supposing  that,  across  this  border¬ 
line  on  the  course  of  the  lower  Ouse,  the  ground 
which  now  forms  our  Huntingdonshire  had  been 
occupied  before  571  by  the  Engle  folk  whom  we 
find  in  later  days  settled  there. 

That  the  Engle  were  at  the  same  time  masters  of 
the  upland  which  stretched  like  a  bar  across  Cuth-  valley. 
wulf’s  Road  to  the  north  is  less  certain ;  for  in  this 
quarter,  as  we  have  seen,  the  dense  screen  of  forests 
along  the  southern  slopes  of  Northamptonshire  might 
of  themselves  have  held  the  West  Saxons  at  bay. 

But  the  conquest  of  the  Trent  valley  must  now  have 
been  going  on ;  and  the  presence  of  Englishmen  on 
the  northern  upland  is  the  best  explanation  of  the 
sudden  wheel  which  the  West  Saxons  now  made  to 
the  west.  Directly  westward,  indeed,  they  were  still 
not  as  yet  to  press ;  for  the  woods  of  Dorsetshire 
baffled  them,  and  those  of  the  Frome  valley  long 
proved  a  protection  to  the  Britons  of  Somerset. 

Nor,  for  reasons  we  are  less  able  to  discover,  did 
they  push  up  the  oolitic  slopes  from  our  Oxford- 


1  I  do  not  rely  wholly  on  the  fact  of  the  present  shire  line ;  for 
here  language  serves  as  a  more  definite  boundary.  Bedfordshire 
men  still  speak  a  Saxon,  Huntingdon  and  Northamptonshire  folk 
soeak  an  Engle,  dialect. 


122 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  hi.  shire  to  the  brow  of  the  Cotswolds,  where  the  town 
conquests  of  Corinium  challenged  their  arms.  It  may  have 
Saxons,  been  that  the  tangled  streams,  the  woodlands,  and 
c.  500^577.  the  Pass  over  the  Thames  at  Lechlade,  which  pro- 
tected  this  district,  were  still  held  too  strongly  by 


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CEJSTERX  \^r  Alt/  VERLUCJSi*^  J^vv’-N  CAlTEVAx 

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vf's'  4,-(.c,*eh.ceas'te»k  frt-'SSV 

J)  i  V)  CirertfCSlrr^SSe^: 


Stanfordi  Geographical  Ettabf 


the  forces  of  the  city.  But  on  their  northwestern 
border,  in  the  interval  between  these  lines  of  attack, 
lay  a  third  line  which  was  guarded  by  no  such  bar¬ 
riers,  the  line  of  the  lower  Severn  valley,  and  it  was 
on  this  tract  that  the  West  Sexe  poured  from  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


123 


Wiltshire  Downs  in  577.1 *  The  country  was  richer  chap.  m. 
than  any  they  had  as  yet  traversed.  Nowhere  do  conquests 
the  remains  of  both  private  and  public  buildings  Saxons, 
show  greater  wealth  and  refinement  than  at  Corin-c .  5^I5r7 
ium,  the  chief  town  of  the  Cotswolds,  which  stood 
on  the  site  of  our  Cirencester,  and  which  was  sur¬ 
passed  in  wealth  and  importance  among  its  fellow- 
towns  only  by  York,  London,  and  Colchester.3  Be¬ 
low  the  Cotswolds,  in  the  valley  of  the  Severn,  Gle- 
vum,  the  predecessor  of  our  Gloucester,  though  small¬ 
er  in  size,  was  equally  important  from  its  position  at 
the  head  of  the  estuary,  and  from  its  neighborhood 
to  the  iron-works  of  the  forest  of  Dean.  Less  than 
these  in  extent,  but  conspicuous  from  the  grandeur 
of  its  public  buildings,  Bath  was  then,  as  in  later 
times,  the  fashionable  resort  of  the  gouty  provincial. 

Its  hot  springs  were  covered  by  a  colonnade  which 
lasted  down  to  almost  recent  times ;  and  its  local 
deity,  Sul,  may  still  have  found  worshippers  in  the 
lordly  temple  whose  fragments  are  found  among  its 
ruins.3  The  territory  of  the  three  towns  shows  their 
power,  for  it  comprised  the  whole  district  of  the 
Cotswolds  and  the  lower  Severn,  with  a  large  part  of 
what  is  now  Northern  Somersetshire.  It  stretched, 
therefore,  from  Mendip  on  the  south  as  far  north¬ 
ward  as  the  forest  which  then  covered  almost  the 
whole  of  Worcestershire.  This  fertile  district  was 

1  As  to  this  inroad,  I  follow,  in  the  main,  Dr.  Guest’s  paper,  “  On  the 

English  Conquest  of  the  Severn  Valley,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xix.  195. 

3  Guest,  “Conquest  of  Severn  Valley,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xix. 

195.  For  Corinium,  see  paper  by  Mr.  Tucker,  Archaeol.  Journal, 
vi.  321.  The  modern  Cirencester  “does  not  occupy  more  than  one 
third  of  the  area  of  the  Roman  city.” 

3  The  Roman  remains  at  Bath  have  been  described  by  Mr.  Scarth 
in  numerous  papers,  some  of  which  may  be  found  in  the  Proceed¬ 
ings  of  the  Somerset  Archaeological  Society. 


I24 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  III. 

Conquests 
of  the 
Saxons. 

c.  500-577. 


Battle  of 
Deorham. 


thickly  set  with  the  country-houses  and  estates  of 
the  wealthier  provincials.  On  either  side  of  a  road 
that  runs  through  the  heart  of  it,  from  Cirencester 
to  Aust  Passage  over  the  Severn,  as  well  as  along 
the  roads  which  linked  the  three  cities  together, 
these  mansions  stood  thickly;  and  that  of  Wood- 
chester  is,  perhaps,  the  largest  and  most  magnificent 
whose  remains  have  as  yet  been  found  in  Britain.1 
Two  courts,  round  which  ran  the  farm  buildings 
and  domestic  buildings  of  the  house,  covered  an 
area  five  hundred  feet  deep  and  three  hundred  broad. 
Every  colonnade  and  passage  had  its  tessellated 
pavement ;  marble  statues  stood  out  from  the  gayly 
painted  walls ;  while  pictures  of  Orpheus  and  Pan 
gleamed  from  amid  the  fanciful  scroll-work  and  fret¬ 
work  of  its  mosaic  floors. 

It  was  from  houses  such  as  these,  and  from  the 
three  cities  to  which  they  clung,  that  the  army  gath¬ 
ered  which  met  the  West  Saxons  under  Ceawlin  as 
they  pushed  over  the  Cotswolds  into  the  valley  of 
the  Severn.  But  the  old  municipal  independence 
seems  to  have  been  passing  away.  The  record  of 
the  battle  in  the  Chronicle  of  the  conquerors  con¬ 
nects  the  three  cities  with  three  kings ;  and  from 
the  Celtic  names  of  these  kings,  Conmael,  Condidan 
or  Kyndylan,  and  Farinmael,  we  may  infer  that  the 
Roman  town  party,  which  had  once  been  strong 
enough  to  raise  Aurelius  to  the  throne  of  Britain, 
was  now  driven  to  bow  to  the  supremacy  of  native 
chieftains.2  It  was  the  forces  of  these  kings  that 
met  Ceawlin  at  Deorham,  a  village  which  lies  north- 

1  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  pp.  229-240. 

s  E.  Chron.  a.  5 77.  Guest,  “  Conquest  of  Severn  Valley,”  Archaeol. 
Journal,  xix.  194. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


125 


ward  of  Bath  on  a  chain  of  hills  overlooking  the  CHAP-  hi. 
Severn  valley,  and  whose  defeat  threw  open  the  conquests 
country  of  the  three  towns  to  the  West-Saxon  arms.  Saxons. 
Through  the  three  years  that  followed,  the  invaders  c  500^77 
must  have  been  spreading  over  the  district  which  — 
this  victory  made  their  own.  Westward,  if  Welsh 
legend  is  to  be  trusted,  their  forays  reached  across 
the  Severn  as  far  as  the  Wye.1  To  the  south  they 
seem  to  have  pushed  across  the  Avon  past  the  site 
of  the  future  Bristol,  and  over  the  limestone  mass  of 
Mendip,  whence  they  drove  off  in  flight  the  lead- 
miners  who  have  left  their  cinder -heaps  along  its 
crest,  till  they  were  checked  in  their  progress  by  the 
marshes  of  Glastonbury.2  In  the  southwest  they 
were  unable  to  dislodge  the  Britons  from  the  forest 
of  Braden,  the  woodland  that  filled  the  Frome  val¬ 
ley  ;  and  this  wedge  of  unconquered  ground  ran  up 
for  the  next  hundred  years  into  the  heart  of  their 
territory.  But  in  the  rich  tract  along  the  lower 
Severn  which  the  site  of  their  victory  overlooked 
their  settlements  lay  thick.  Here,  in  the  present 
Gloucestershire  and  Worcestershire,  the  settlers  bore 
the  name  of  the  Hwiccas,3  a  name  which  took  a  yet 


1  Guest,  “Conquest  of  Severn  Valley,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xix. 
*95- 

2  Guest,  “  Welsh  and  English  in  Somerset,”  Archaeol.  Journal, 
xvi.  109-1 17. 

3  Theodore  set  the  “bishop  of  the  Hwiccas”  at  Worcester;  and 
his  diocese  included  both  the  counties  of  Worcester  and  Gloucester 
as  well  as  the  adjacent  districts.  This  seems  to  prove  that  “  Hwic- 
can  ”  was  the  older  name  for  the  settlers  along  the  whole  of  the 
lower  Severn,  the  Cotswolds  above  it,  and  Southern  Warwickshire  ; 
and  Florence  (a.  897)  places  Cirencester  “  in  meridionali  parte  Wic- 
ciorum  ”  —  which  would  confirm  this.  Earle,  “Local  Names  of 
Gloucestershire,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  xix.  51,  52,  connects  the  name 


126 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap-hi-  wider  range  as  from  the  valley  of  the  Severn  the  in- 
conquests  vaders  spread  over  the  upland  of  the  Cotswolds  to 
Saxons,  settle  round  the  fallen  Corinium,  and  found  homes 
c.  500-577.  ^ong  the  southern  skirts  of  the  forest  of  Arden. 


with  our  Wychwood,  spelled  in  841  “  Hwicce-wudu,”  and  which, 
though  in  Oxfordshire,  is  within  a  short  distance  of  Gloucestershire, 
and  marks  the  water-shed  between  the  Severn  and  the  Thames.  He 
seems,  however,  to  limit  the  Hwiccas  to  Gloucestershire,  and  to 
give  Worcestershire  to  the  Magesaetas,  whom  Mr.  Freeman  places 
in  Herefordshire  and  Shropshire  (Norman  Conquest,  i.  561). 


t. David.' 


pJ  CEASTEfc 

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pr\C  0.R  I N  LU-W 

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Ichetter  O 


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.SO  RBI00I 


'fnstonbw 


Badlui 


SOUTH-WESTERN  BRITAIN 

Honan  namet  GLEAYUIH 
English  ••  DEOPHAM 
Modern  •*  Arnesbury 

English  Miles, 
o  e  10  20  40 


lanford'i  Oeogr 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


127 


« 

CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  SETTLEMENT  OF  THE  CONQUERORS. 

With  the  battle  of  Deorham  and  the  winning  oiThe,aseof 
the  lower  Severn  valley,  we  enter  on  a  new  age  of 
our  history.  The  conquest,  indeed,  was  far  from 
being  complete ;  for  when  Ceawlin  paused  in  his  ca¬ 
reer  of  victory,  half  the  island  still  remained  un¬ 
conquered,  and  the  border-line  of  the  invaders  ran 
roughly  along  the  rise  that  parts  the  waters  of  Brit¬ 
ain,  from  Ettrick  across  Cheviot,  along  the  Yorkshire 
moors  to  the  Peak  of  Derbyshire,  thence  by  the 
skirts  of  Arden  to  the  mouth  of  Severn,  and  across 
the  estuary  of  that  river,  by  Mendip,  through  the 
woods  of  Dorset  to  the  sea.  But  the  country  within 
this  line  comprised  all  that  was  really  worth  win¬ 
ning,  for  the  wild  land  to  westward  and  northward 
had  little  to  tempt  an  invader.  Though  the  tide  of 
invasion,  therefore,  still  crept  on,  it  crept  on  slowly 
and  uncertainly ;  and  from  this  time  the  energies  of 
the  conquerors  were  mainly  absorbed,  not  in  winning 
fresh  land,  but  in  settling  in  the  land  they  had  won. 

We  pass,  then,  from  an  age  of  conquest  to  an  age  of 
settlement.  But,  dim  as  was  the  light  that  guided 
us  through  much  of  our  earlier  story,  it  is  bright  be¬ 
side  the  darkness  that  wraps  the  first  upgrowth  of 
English  life  on  British  soil.  No  written  record  tells 
us  how  Saxon  or  Engle  dealt  with  the  land  he  had 


128 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


char  iv.  made  his  own ;  how  he  drove  out  its  older  inhabi- 
The  settle-  tants,  or  how  he  shared  it  among  the  new ;  how  the 
th^con-  settlers  settled  down  in  township  or  thorpe,  or  how 
querors.  f^gy  moulded  Jnto  shape,  under  changed  conditions, 
the  life  they  had  brought  with  them  from  German 
shores.  Even  legend  and  tradition  are  silent  as  to 
their  settlement.  It  is  only  by  help  of  the  few 
traces  of  this  older  life  which  remains  embedded  in 
custom  or  in  law,  or  in  later  verse,  that  we  can  sketch 
its  outlines,  and  such  a  sketch  must  necessarily  be 
dim  and  incomplete. 

Weakness  The  character  of  the  settlement  was  in  great 

of  English  #  o 

attack,  measure  determined  by  that  of  the  conquest  itself ; 
as  that  of  the  conquest  was  determined  by  the  main 
characteristics  which  distinguished  the  winning  of 
Britain  from  the  winning  of  the  other  Western  prov¬ 
inces  of  the  Empire.  The  first  of  these  was  the 
comparative  weakness  of  the  attack.  Nowhere  had 
the  barbaric  force  been  so  small  or  its  onset  so  fit¬ 
ful.  Difficulties  of  transport  made  attack  by  sea 
less  easy  than  attack  by  land;  and  the  warriors  who 
were  brought  across  the  Channel  or  the  German 
Ocean  by  the  boats  of  Hengest  and  Cerdic  must 
have  been  few  beside  the  hosts  who  followed  Alboin 
or  Chlodowig  over  the  Alps  or  the  Rhine.  The 
story  of  the  conquest  confirms  the  English  tradition 
that  the  invaders  of  Britain  landed  in  small  parties, 
and  that  they  were  only  gradually  reinforced  by 
after-comers.  Nor  was  there  any  joint  action  among 
the  assailants  to  compensate  for  the  smallness  of 
their  numbers.1  Though  all  spoke  the  same  lan- 


1  Stubbs,  Constit.  Hist.  i.  67. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  29 

guage  and  used  the  same  laws,  they  had  no  such 
bond  of  political  union  as  the  Franks;  and,  though 
all  were  bent  on  winning  the  same  land,  each  band 
and  each  leader  preferred  their  own  separate  course 
of  action  to  any  collective  enterprise. 

A  second  and  yet  more  momentous  characteristic 
was  the  stubbornness  of  the  defence.  It  is  this,  in¬ 
deed,  which  above  all  distinguished  the  conquest  of 
Britain  from  that  of  other  provinces  of  Rome.  In 
all  the  world-wide  struggles  between  Rome  and  the 
Germanic  races,  no  land  was  so  stubbornly  fought 
for  or  so  hardly  won.  In  Gaul  the  Frank  or  the 
Visigoth  met  little  native  resistance  save  from  the 
peasants  of  Brittany  or  Auvergne.  No  popular  re¬ 
volt  broke  out  against  the  rule  of  Odoacer  or  The- 
odoric  in  Italy.  But  in  Britain  the  invader  was  met 
by  a  courage  and  tenacity  almost  equal  to  his  own. 
So  far  as  we  can  follow  the  meagre  record  of  the 
conquerors,  or  track  their  advance  by  the  dykes  and 
ruins  it  left  behind  it,  every  inch  of  ground  seems 
to  have  been  fought  for.  Field  by  field,  town  by 
town,  forest  by  forest,  the  land  was  won ;  and  as 
each  bit  of  ground  was  torn  away  from  its  defenders 
the  beaten  men  sullenly  drew  back  from  it,  to  fight 
as  stubbornly  for  the  next. 

But  there  was  yet  a  third  characteristic  of  the 
conquest  which  told  on  the  after -settlement,  and 
this  was  the  way  in  which  the  struggle  was  influ¬ 
enced  by  the  nature  of  the  conquered  country  itself. 
It  is  impossible  to  follow  the  story  of  its  winning 
without  being  struck  by  the  natural  obstacles  which 
the  province  presented  to  an  invader.  Elsewhere 
in  the  Roman  world  the  work  of  the  conqueror  was 

9 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Stubborn¬ 
ness  of  the 
defence. 


Nature  of 
the  conn  ■ 
try. 


130 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


The  Brit¬ 
ons  driven 
off. 


aided  by  the  very  civilization  of  Rome.  Vandal  and 
Goth  marched  along  Roman  highways,  over  ground 
cleared  by  the  Roman  axe,  as  they  crossed  river  or 
ravine  on  the  Roman  bridge.  To  a  great  extent  it 
was  so  in  Britain.  But  though  Britain  had  been  Ro¬ 
manized,  she  had  been  less  Romanized  than  any  other 
province  of  the  West;  and  the  material  civilization 
of  the  island  was  yet  more  backward  than  its  social 
civilization.  The  mere  forest  belts  which  remained 
over  vast  stretches  of  country  formed  mighty  bar¬ 
riers — barriers  which  were  everywhere  strong  enough 
to  check  the  advance  of  an  invader,  and  sometimes 
strong  enough  to  arrest  it.  The  Jutes  and  the 
South  Saxons  were  brought  wholly  to  a  standstill 
by  the  Andredsweald.  The  East  Saxons  never 
pierced  the  woods  of  their  western  border.  The 
Fens  proved  impassable  to  the  East  Angles.  It  was 
only  after  a  long  and  terrible  struggle  that  the  West 
Saxons  could  hew  their  way  through  the  forests  that 
girt  in  the  Gwent  of  the  southern  coast,  and  in  the 
height  of  their  power  they  were  thrown  back  from 
the  forests  of  Cheshire. 

Under  such  conditions,  the  overrunning  of  Britain 
could  not  fail  to  be  a  very  different  matter  from  the 
rapid  and  easy  overrunning  of  such  countries  as 
Gaul.  Instead  of  quartering  themselves  quietly, 
like  their  fellows  abroad,  on  subjects  who  were  glad 
to  buy  peace  by  obedience  and  tribute,  Engle  and 
Saxon  had  to  make  every  inch  of  Britain  their  own 
by  hard  fighting.  Instead  of  mastering  the  country 
in  a  few  great  battles,  they  had  to  tear  it  bit  by  bit 
from  its  defenders  in  a  weary  and  endless  strife. 
How  slow  the  work  of  English  conquest  was  may 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


131 

be  seen  from  the  fact  that  it  took  nearly  thirty  years  chap.  iv. 
to  win  Kent  alone,  and  sixty  to  complete  the  con-  The  settle- 
quest  of  Southern  Britain,  while  the  conquest  of  the  thlTcon- 
bulk  of  the  island  was  only  wrought  out  after  two  querors- 
centuries  of  bitter  warfare.  But  it  was  just  through 
the  length  of  the  struggle  that,  of  all  the  German 
conquests,  this  was  the  most  thorough  and  complete. 

That  of  France  by  the  Franks,  or  that  of  Italy  by 
the  Lombards,  proved  little  more  than  a  forcible 
settlement  of  the  one  or  the  other  among  tributary 
subjects  who  were  destined  in  a  long  course  of  ages 
to  absorb  their  conquerors.  French  is  the  tongue, 
not  of  the  Frank,  but  of  the  Gaul  whom  he  over¬ 
came  ;  and  the  fair  hair  of  the  Lombard  is  all  but 
unknown  in  Lombardy.  But  almost  to  the  close  of 
the  sixth  century  the  English  conquest  of  Britain 
was  a  sheer  dispossession  of  the  conquered  people ; 
and,  so  far  as  the  English  sword  in  these  earlier 
days  reached,  Britain  became  England1 — a  land,  that 
is,  not  of  Britons,  but  of  Englishmen. 

There  is  no  need  to  believe  that  the  clearing  of  ,Not, 

o  slauv/i- 

the  land  meant  the  general  slaughter  of  the  men  tend. 
who  held  it,  or  to  account  for  such  a  slaughter  by 
supposed  differences  between  the  temper  of  the 
English  and  those  of  other  conquerors.  Fierce  and 
cruel  as  they  may  have  been,  the  picture  which 
Gregory  of  Tours  gives  us  of  the  Franks  hinders 
us  from  believing  that  Englishmen  were  more  fierce 
or  cruel  than  other  Germans  who  attacked  the  Em¬ 
pire.  Nor  is  there  more  ground  for  the  assertion1 

1  I  use  the  word  only  by  anticipation.  The  name  “  England  ”  it¬ 
self  is  not  found  before  the  days  of  Eadgar  and  Dunstan. 

5  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest,  i.  20. 


132 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

Tlie  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Proofs  of 
the  with¬ 
drawal  of 
the  Brit¬ 
ons. 


that  they  were  utterly  strange  to  the  Roman  civil¬ 
ization  ;  indeed,  the  mere  presence  of  Saxon  vessels 
in  the  Channel  for  a  hundred  years  before  their 
descent  upon  Britain  must  have  familiarized  its  in¬ 
vaders  with  what  civilization  was  to  be  found  in  the 
provinces  of  the  West.  It  was  not  the  temper  of 
the  conquerors  that  gave  its  character  to  the  con¬ 
quest  of  Britain  so  much  as  the  temper  of  the  con¬ 
quered.  The  displacement  of  the  conquered  people 
was  only  made  possible  by  their  own  stubborn  re¬ 
sistance,  and  by  the  slow  progress  of  the  conquerors 
in  the  teeth  of  it.  Slaughter,  no  doubt,  there  was 
on  the  battle-field  or  in  towns  like  Anderida,  whose 
long  defence  woke  wrath  in  their  besiegers.  But, 
for  the  most  part,  the  Britons  cannot  have  been 
slaughtered ;  they  were  simply  defeated,  and  drew 
back. 

The  proofs  of  such  a  displacement  lie  less  in  iso¬ 
lated  passages  from  chronicle  or  history  than  in  the 
broad  features  of  the  conquest  itself.1  When  Hen- 
gest  landed  in  Thanet,  he  found  Britain  inhabited 
by  a  people  of  Celtic  and  Roman  blood,  a  people 
governed  by  Celtic  or  Roman  laws,  speaking  the 
Welsh  or  Latin  tongue,  still  sharing  to  a  great  ex¬ 
tent  the  civilization  and  manners  of  the  Empire 
from  which  they  had  parted,  and  at  least  outwardly 
conforming  to  the  Christian  faith  which  that  Em¬ 
pire  professed.  The  outer  aspect  of  the  land  re¬ 
mained  that  of  a  Roman  province ;  it  was  guarded 
by  border  fortresses ;  it  was  studded  with  peopled 
cities ;  it  was  tilled  by  great  landowners  whose  villas 


1  Stubbs,  Constit.  Hist.  i.  70. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


133 


rose  proudly  over  the  huts  of  their  serfs.  But  when  chap. IV- 
Ceawlin  turned  from  the  battle-field  of  Deorham,  the  Thesettie- 
face  of  the  Britain  that  lay  behind  him  was  utterly  thecon- 
changed.  So  far  as  the  English  or  Saxon  sword  had  querors- 
reached — to  the  eastward,  that  is,  of  the  line  which 
we  have  drawn  through  Central  Britain — the  coun¬ 
try  showed  no  sign  of  British  or  Roman  life  at  all. 

The  tradition  both  of  conquerors  and  of  conquered 
tells  us  that  an  utter  change  had  taken  place  in  the 
men  that  dwelt  in  it.  They  knew  themselves  only 
as  Englishmen,  and  in  the  history  or  law  of  these 
English  inhabitants  we  find  as  yet  not  a  trace  of 
the  existence  of  a  single  Briton  among  them.1  The 
only  people  that  English  chronicle  or  code  knows 
of  as  living  on  the  conquered  soil  are  Englishmen. 

Nor  does  the  British  tradition  know  of  any  other. 

Had  Britons  formed  part  of  the  population  in  the 
land  which  had  been  reft  away  by  the  invader’s 
sword,  they  must  have  been  known  to  their  fellow- 
Britons  beyond  the  English  border.  But  in  the  one 
record  of  such  a  Britain  that  remains  to  us,  the  his¬ 
tory  of  Gildas,  there  is  no  hint  of  their  existence.2 
To  him,  as  to  his  fellow-countrymen,  the  land  of  the 
Englishmen  is  a  foreign  land,  and  its  people  a  for¬ 
eign  people. 

1  From  the  close  of  the  sixth  century,  when  the  conquest  took 
wider  bounds  and  a  new  character,  we  find  a  different  state  of 
things  in  the  newly  annexed  districts.  Here  I  am  speaking  strictly 
of  the  earlier  age  of  conquest  and  of  the  portion  of  Britain  which 
it  covered. 

2  There  is,  indeed,  a  single  phrase  (Hist.  cap.  25,  “  alii  fame  confecti 
accedentes,  manus  hostibus  dabant  in  aevum  servituri  ”),  which  speaks 
of  the  surrender  of  Britons  to  their  conquerors ;  but  such  captives 
would  at  such  a  time  be  sold  into  slavery,  and  the  mention  of  them 
only  makes  the  silence  of  Gildas  elsewhere  the  more  significant. 


134 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle 
rnent  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Evidence 
of  names. 


The  contemporary  tradition,  then,  is  everywhere 
the  same ;  and  it  is  confirmed  by  every  fact  which 
meets  us  in  the  path  of  our  story.  Had  the  older 
inhabitants  remained  as  serfs  or  as  a  dependent  peo¬ 
ple  among  their  conquerors,  as  the  older  inhabitants 
of  Gaul  remained  among  the  Franks,  or  those  of 
Italy  among  the  Lombards,  we  should  find  a  state 
of  things  in  some  degree  like  to  that  of  Italy  or 
Gaul.  We  should  find,  at  any  rate,  some  traces  of 
the  provincials  in  the  history  of  the  joint  popula¬ 
tion;  some  traces  of  their  cities  and  their  country- 
houses  ;  some  of  their  names  mingling  with  those  of 
the  new-comers ;  some  remains  of  their  language, 
their  religion,  their  manners,  and  their  law.  But  in 
conquered  Britain  we  find  not  a  trace  of  these  things. 
The  designations  of  the  local  features  of  the  country, 
indeed — the  names  of  hill  and  vale  and  river — often 
remain  purely  Celtic.  There  are  “  pens  ”  and  “  duns  ” 
among  our  uplands,  “  combes  ”  in  our  valleys,  “  exes  ” 
and  “  ocks  ”  among  our  running  waters.  But  when 
we  look  at  the  traces  of  human  life  itself,  at  the 
names  of  the  villages  and  hamlets  that  lie  scattered 
over  the  country-side,  we  find  them  purely  English. 
The  “  vill  ”  and  the  “  city  ”  have  vanished,  and  in 
their  stead  appear  the  “  tun  ”  and  “  ham  ”  and 
“  thorpe  ”  of  the  new  settlers.  If  we  turn  from  the 
names  of  these  villages  to  those  of  the  men  who  live 
in  them,  the  contrast  becomes  even  stronger.  So 
far  as  existing  documents  tell  us  anything,  they  tell 
us  that  Roman  and  Welshman  wholly  vanished 
from  the  land.  When  Gregory  of  Tours  writes  the 
story  of  Gaul  after  its  conquest  by  the  Franks,  we 
meet  in  the  course  of  his  narrative  with  as  many 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


135 


Roman  names  as  Frank.  But  in  the  parallel  history  chap,  tv. 
of  Britain  after  its  conquest  by  the  English  which  The  settle- 
we  owe  to  Basda,  we  meet  with  no  British  or  Roman  theTcon- 
names  at  all.  He  gives  us,  indeed,  the  names  of  queror8, 
Britons  in  districts  which  still  remained  free  from 
English  rule ;  but  amid  the  hundreds  of  men  and 
women  whom  he  records  as  living  and  acting  in  the 
new  England,  there  is  not  one  whose  name  is  not 
almost  certainly  English.1 

It  is  the  same  with  language.  Latin,  which  had  Evjdence 

&  *  oj  lan - 

been  the  official  tongue  of  the  province,  the  lan-  g»age. 
guage  of  its  soldiers  and  civil  administrators,  and 
probably  that  of  its  citizens,  withdrew  before  the 
invader  to  the  southwest  and  the  west.  When  it 
again  appeared  in  Eastern  Britain,  it  came  as  a  for¬ 
eign  tongue  brought  in  by  foreign  missionaries,  and 
needing  interpreters  to  explain  it  to  the  men  it  found 
there.2  The  British  tongue — the  tongue,  that  is,  of 
the  mass  of  the  population  even  under  Roman  rule 
— though  it  lived  on  as  the  tongue  of  the  Britons 
themselves  in  the  land  to  which  they  withdrew,  has 
left  hardly  a  trace  of  its  existence  in  the  language 
which  has  taken  its  place  over  the  conquered  area.3 


1  I  do  not  know  of  any  that  have  even  been  claimed  as  British 
save  Coifi  and  the  West  Saxon  Ceadwalla. 

5  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  23,  25 ;  id.  Vit.  Abbatum,  ed.  Stevenson,  p.  141. 

3  The  Celtic  words  in  our  earlier  English  were  first  collected  by 
Mr.  Garnett  in  his  Philological  Essays.  They  are  few,  and  mostly 
words  of  domestic  use,  such  as  basket ,  which  may  well  have  crept  in 
from  the  female  slaves  who  must  here  and  there  have  been  seized 
by  the  invaders.  It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  we  have  no 
means  of  ascertaining  when  such  words  became  English ;  and  that 
after  the  change  in  the  character  of  the  conquest — that  is,  from  the 
seventh  century — Welsh  words,  like  Welsh  names,  would  naturally 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Evidence 
of  towns. 


I36 

There  is  the  same  utter  change  in  government,  in 
society,  in  law.  The  Roman  law  simply  disap¬ 
peared  and  no  trace  of  the  body  of  Celtic  customs 
which  form  the  Welsh  law  can  be  detected  in  the 
purely  Teutonic  institutes  which  formed  the  law  of 
the  English  settlers.  The  political  institutions  that 
we  find  established  in  the  conquered  land,  as  well 
as  the  social  usages  of  the  conquering  people,  are 
utterly  different  from  those  of  the  Roman  or  the 
Celt ;  not  only  are  they  those  which  are  common 
to  the  German  race,  but  they  are  the  most  purely 
German  institutions  that  any  branch  of  the  German 
race  has  preserved.* 1 2 * * 5 

Had  any  fragment  of  the  older  provincial  life  sur¬ 
vived,  the  analogy  of  other  provinces  shows  that  it 
would  have  been  that  municipal  organization  which 


filter  in  from  the  mixed  population  of  Western  and  Southwestern 
Britain. 

1  Stubbs,  Constit.  Hist.  i.  1 1. 

2  Stubbs,  Constit.  Hist.  i.  6:  “If  its  history  is  not  the  perfectly 
pure  development  of  Germanic  principles,  it  is  the  nearest  existing 
approach  to  such  a  development.”  Again,  at  p.  1 1  :  “  The  polity 
developed  by  the  German  races  on  British  soil  is  the  purest  product 
of  their  primitive  instinct.  .  .  .  The  institutions  of  the  Saxons  of 
Germany  long  after  the  conquest  of  Britain  were  the  most  perfect 
exponent  of  the  system  which  Tacitus  saw,  and  described  in  the 

Germania;  and  the  polity  of  their  kinsmen  in  England,  though  it 
may  not  be  older  in  its  monuments  than  the  Lex  Salica,  is  more 
entirely  free  from  Roman  influences.  In  England  the  common 
germs  were  developed  and  ripened  with  the  smallest  intermixture 
of  foreign  elements.  Not  only  were  all  the  successive  invasions  of 

Britain,  which  from  the  eighth  to  the  eleventh  century  diversify  the 
history  of  the  island,  conducted  by  nations  of  common  extraction, 
but,  with  the  exception  of  ecclesiastical  influence,  no  foreign  inter¬ 

ference  that  was  not  German  in  origin  was  admitted  at  all.  Lan¬ 
guage,  law,  customs,  and  religion  preserve  their  original  conforma¬ 
tion  and  coloring.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


137 


elsewhere  handed  down  the  tradition  of  the  Empire,  chap.  iv. 
In  the  Roman  world  political  and  social  life  had  The  settie- 
been  concentrated  in  its  towns,  and  we  have  seen  th0ncon- 
how  great  a  part  they  played  in  the  times  which  fol-  querors~ 
lowed  the  withdrawal  of  the  Roman  rule.  But  with 
the  English  conquest  the  towns  disappear.  Though 
the  Englishmen,  like  other  Germans,  shrank  from 
dwelling  within  city  walls,  a  native  population,  had  it 
survived  here  as  it  survived  elsewhere,  would  have 
remained,  subject  indeed,  but  unchanged,  in  its  older 
homes.  But  as  the  conquest  passed  over  them,  the 
towns  of  Roman  Britain  sank  into  mere  ruins. 

Some  never  rose  from  their  ruins.  Anderida  re¬ 
mained  a  wreck  of  uninhabited  stones  in  the  twelfth 
century,1  and  its  square  of  walls  remains  lonely  and 
uninhabited  still.  Silchester  and  Uriconium,  large 
as  they  were,  have  only  been  brought  to  light  again 
by  modern  research.  The  very  sites  of  many  still 
remain  undiscovered.  Such  a  permanent  extinction, 
however,  was  seldom  possible,  for  the  local  advan¬ 
tages  which  had  drawn  population  to  hill  or  river- 
ford  in  Celtic  or  Roman  times  began  again  to  tell  as 
the  new  England  itself  grew  populous  and  indus¬ 
trial,  and  the  sites  of  these  older  cities  became  nec¬ 
essarily  the  sites  of  the  new.  But  their  repeopling 
was  only  after  centuries  of  desolation  and  neglect. 

We  have  no  ground  for  believing  that  Winchester 
had  risen  on  the  site  of  the  Belgic  Gwenta  before 
the  middle  of  the  seventh  century.2  Cambridge  was 


1  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  (ed.  Arnold),  p.  45. 

3  The  local  traditions  place  the  hallowing  of  the  new  church  there 
in  648.  See  Rudborne,  Hist.  Major,  and  Annales  Eccl.  Wint.  (Anglia 
Sacra,  i.  189,  288). 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Evidence 
of  religion. 


i<58  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

still  a  heap  of  ruins  in  the  eighth  century,'  though  it 
had  risen  to  fresh  life  in  the  tenth.  The  great  mili¬ 
tary  station  of  Deva  was  still  the  “  waste  Chester  ” 
that  yEthelfrith  left  it,  when  Aithelfked  four  hun¬ 
dred  years  after  made  it  her  Chester  on  the  Dee.1 2 
And  even  when  life  returned  to  them,  it  was  long 
before  the  new  towns  could  again  cover  the  whole 
area  of  their  ruined  predecessors.  It  was  not  till 
Cnut’s  time  that  York  could  cover  the  area  of  Ebu- 
racum.  It  was  not  till  after  Dunstan’s  day  that 
Canterbury  grew  big  enough  to  fill  again  the  walls 
of  Durovernum.  It  was  not  till  the  very  eve  of  the 
conquest  that  London  itself  stretched  its  dwellings 
over  the  space  which  lay  within  the  walls  of  Lon- 
diniurn.3  The  new  towns,  too,  grew  up  as  new 
towns.  Of  the  life  or  municipal  government  of  their 
Roman  predecessors  they  knew  nothing.  They  in¬ 
herited  no  curials  or  decurions.  Their  municipal 
constitution,  like  their  social  organization,  was  of  a 
purely  English  type.4 

The  faith  of  Britain  perished  as  utterly.  Nothing 
brings  home  to  us  so  vividly  the  change  which  had 
passed  over  the  conquered  country  as  the  entire  dis¬ 
appearance  of  its  older  religion.  Had  the  conquest 
of  Britain  been  in  any  way  like  the  conquest  of 
Italy  or  of  Gaul,  its  religious  issue  could  hardly 
have  been  other  than  theirs.  Had  the  Britons  been 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  19. 

2  Flor.  Wore.  (ed.  Thorpe) :  “Civitatem  Legionum,  tunc  temporis 
desertam.”  E.  Chron.  a.  894 :  “  Anre  waestre  castre.” 

3  At  all  these  three  towns  the  parishes  furthest  from  the  new 
starting  -  point  within  the  walls  are.  as  the  dedications  of  their 
churches  show,  of  these  dates. 

4  Stubbs,  Constit.  Hist.  i.  105,  and  note. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


139 


left  existing  on  the  soil  as  a  subject  population,  pay-  chap.  iv. 
ins:  tribute  to  or  tilling  the  lands  of  foreign  lords,  The  settle 
the  change  of  faith  would  most  probably  have  been  th^con- 
a  change  in  the  religion  of  the  conquerors,  and  not  querors- 
of  the  conquered.  To  judge  from  the  stubbornness 
with  which  the  Romanized  peoples  rejected  heathen¬ 
dom,  and  from  the  facility  with  which  the  Teutonic 
races  elsewhere  yielded  to  the  spell  of  Christianity, 
it  was  not  the  Britons  who  would  have  become  wor¬ 
shippers  of  Woden,  but  Engle  and  Saxon  who  would 
have  become  worshippers  of  Christ.  But  even  if  we 
suppose  the  invaders  to  have  retained  their  old  re¬ 
ligion,  the  religious  aspect  of  the  land,  as  a  whole, 
would  have  been  little  altered.  In  no  instance  did 
the  Teutonic  conquerors  wage  a  religious  war  on 
the  faiths  of  the  conquered  people.  To  barbarous 
races,  indeed,  who  look  on  religion  as  simply  a 
part  of  the  national  life,  proselytism  or  persecution 
is  impossible.  The  heathendom  of  the  invaders 
would  have  been  confined  to  their  own  settlements, 
and  the  whole  British  population  would  have  re¬ 
mained  Christian  as  before.  Its  churches,  its  priest¬ 
hood,  its  ecclesiastical  organization,  its  dioceses  and 
provinces,  its  connection  with  the  rest  of  the  West¬ 
ern  Church,  would  have  gone  on  without  material 
change. 

But  what  we  find  is  the  very  reverse  of  this.  In 
the  conquered  part  of  Britain  Christianity  wholly  dis¬ 
appeared.  The  Church,  and  the  whole  organization 
of  the  Church,  vanished.  The  few  religious  build¬ 
ings  of  whose  existence  we  catch  a  glimpse  survived 
only  as  deserted  ruins.  So  far  was  any  connection 
with  Western  Christianity  from  existing  that  all  the 


140 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chai\  iv.  rest  of  the  Christian  world,  whether  of  the  Celtic  or 
The  settle- Roman  obedience,  lost  sight  of  the  conquered  part 
the  con-  of  Britain  altogether.  When  Rome  long  afterwards 
qnerors.  S0Ught  to  renew  its  contact  with  it,  it  was  as  with  a 
heathen  country;1  and  it  was  in  the  same  way  as  a 
heathen  country  that  it  was  regarded  by  the  Chris¬ 
tians  of  Ireland  and  by  the  Christians  of  Wales. 
When  missionaries  at  last  made  their  way  into  its 
bounds,  there  is  no  record  of  their  having  found  a 
single  Christian  in  the  whole  country.  What  they 
found  was  a  purely  heathen  land ;  a  land  where 
homestead  and  boundary  and  the  very  days  of  the 
week  bore  the  names  of  new  gods  who  had  displaced 
Christ,  and  where  the  inhabitants  were  so  strange  to 
the  faith  they  brought  that  they  looked  at  its  wor¬ 
ship  as  magic.2  It  is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  a 
stronger  proof  that  the  conquest  of  Britain  had  been 
a  real  displacement  of  the  British  people;  for  ifWo- 
denism  so  utterly  supplanted  Christianity,  it  can  only 
have  been  because  the  worshippers  of  Woden  had 
driven  off  from  the  soil  the  worshippers  of  Christ. 
influence  Complete,  however,  as  was  the  wreck  of  Roman 

of  Roman  1  . 

Britain  on  life,  complete  as  was  the  displacement  up  to  this 
theifhS'  point  of  the  older  British  population,  the  past  his¬ 
tory  of  the  island  was  not  without  its  influence  on 
the  new  settlers.  Its  physical  structure,  to  a  great 
extent,  dictated  the  lines  of  their  advance,  the  extent 
of  their  conquest,  and  their  political  distribution 


1  Bceda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  23.  The  first  Roman  missionaries  thought 
of  returning  home  rather  than  of  encountering  these  heathen : 

“  redire  domum  potius  quam  barbaram,  feram,  incredulamque  gen- 
tem,  cujus  ne  linguam  quidem  nossent,  adire  cogitabant.” 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


141 


over  the  conquered  soil,  as  it  had  dictated  the  con-  chap.  iv. 
quest  and  settlement  of  the  races  that  had  preceded  The  settle, 
them.  The  province,  indeed,  gave  its  bounds  to  the  thenconf 
new  England.  It  was  not  the  island  of  Britain  querors- 
which  Engle  and  Saxon  had  mastered,  it  was  the 
portion  of  it  which  lay  within  the  bounds  of  the  Ro¬ 
man  Empire.  Even  in  its  widest  advance,  English 
life  stopped  abruptly  at  the  Frith  of  Forth  and  of 
Clyde,  as  Roman  life  had  stopped  there  before  it; 
while  it  penetrated  but  slowly  and  imperfectly  into 
the  western  and  northwestern  districts  of  Britain, 
as  Rome  had  penetrated  but  slowly  and  imperfectly 
into  them.  The  mountains  and  moors  which  had 
checked  the  progress  of  the  one  invader  checked 
the  progress  of  the  other.  But  even  within  the  lim¬ 
its  of  conquered  Britain,  its  physical  features  often 
shaped  the  settlement  of  the  conquerors.  The  story 
of  the  conquest,  as  we  have  striven  to  follow  it,  has 
shown  us  how  great  an  influence  the  very  ground 
exerted  on  the  direction  and  the  fortunes  of  every 
English  campaign.  In  the  bulk  of  cases  its  charac¬ 
ter  determined  the  bounds,  and  with  the  bounds  the 
after-destinies,  of  the  various  peoples  that  parted  the 
land  between  them.  The  Andredsweald,  with  its 
outliers,  prisoned  the  Jutes  within  the  limits  of  the 
Caint,  and  turned  them  into  Cant-wara,  or  Kentish 
men.  It  dwarfed  into  political  insignificance  the 
Surrey  folk  and  the  South  Saxons,  whom  it  pressed 
between  its  northern  edge  and  the  Thames,  or  be¬ 
tween  its  southern  edge  and  the  sea.  The  insular 
character  of  the  Gwent  upon  the  eastern  coast  forced 
the  bands  of  invaders  that  landed  there  into  politi¬ 
cal  union  as  the  people  of  the  East  Angles.  In  the 


142 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Influence 
of  its  polit¬ 
ical  and 
social 
structure. 


same  way,  the  long  range  of  moorland  and  fen  and 
sea-coast  which  formed  the  framework  of  Yorkshire, 
and  so  long  preserved  the  individuality  of  this  por¬ 
tion  of  the  island,  furnished  the  Deirans  with  their 
natural  boundaries,  and  made  them,  from  the  mere 
space  they  enclosed,  one  of  the  greater  peoples  of 
Britain.1  The  West  Saxons  profited  even  more  from 
the  character  of  the  ground  which  they  traversed. 
Touching  originally  at  the  one  point  in  the  south¬ 
ern  coast  where  access  to  the  province  was  easy, 
they  found  their  first  settlements  moulded  by  the 
bounds  and  divisions  of  the  southern  downs,  while 
from  their  slopes  to  eastward  and  westward  lay  open 
before  them  the  valleys  of  the  Severn  and  the  Thames. 
The  territory  of  Ceawlin,  with  all  the  long  series  of 
events  which  widened  the  realm  of  the  West  Saxons 
into  the  kingdom  of  England,  were  but  the  necessary 
issues  of  the  physical  circumstances  which  brought 
about  their  first  landing  and  settlement  in  Britain. 

Nor  was  the  political  structure  of  the  province 
without  as  distinct  an  influence  on  the  settlement  of 
the  invaders.  The  towns,  with  their  subject  districts, 
often  gave  shape  and  bounds  to  the  states  which 
their  conquerors  founded  about  their  ruins.  The 
districts  of  Camulodunum,  Verulamium,  and  Lon- 
dinium  made  up  the  kingdom  of  the  East  Saxons. 


1  It  is,  however,  remarkable  that  in  the  case  of  Yorkshire  the  in¬ 
cidents  of  the  conquest  modified  the  political  boundaries  of  both 
Celtic  and  Roman  times.  In  both,  the  territory  on  the  western  and 
eastern  coast  belonged  to  the  same  district,  and  the  moorlands  which 
part  our  Yorkshire  from  our  Lancashire  formed  no  boundary-line. 
In  the  earlier  days  of  the  English  conquest,  it  seemed  as  if  this  ar¬ 
rangement  would  be  preserved ;  and  only  a  complicated  set  of  transac¬ 
tions  in  later  times  made  Yorkshire  the  separate  district  which  it  is. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


143 


The  territory  which  the  West  Saxons  acquired  after  chap.  iv. 
the  battle  of  Bedford,  to  the  north  of  the  Thames,  The  settie- 
consisted  of  the  districts  of  four  cities,  whose  early  thenconf 
names  are  forgotten.  Those  of  Bath,  Gloucester,  qtterors- 
and  Cirencester  formed  the  territory  of  the  Hwiccas. 

That  of  Ratae,  or  Leicester,  formed,  in  all  probability, 
the  territory  of  the  Middle  English.  And  what  was 
true  of  the  political  life  of  Britain  was  true  also  of 
its  social  life.  If  the  Roman  landowner  had  disap¬ 
peared,  if  his  villa  was  a  mound  of  ashes  and  charred 
stones,  if  his  cattle  and  serfs  had  been  alike  slaugh¬ 
tered  or  driven  off  from  the  soil,  the  material  work 
which  four  hundred  years  of  continuous  life  had 
done  could  not  wholly  pass  away.  After  all  his 
slaughter  and  pillage,  the  Englishman  found  himself 
in  no  mere  desert.  On  the  contrary,  he  stood  in  the 
midst  of  a  country,  the  material  framework  of  whose 
civilization  remained  unharmed.  The  Roman  road 
still  struck  like  an  arrow  over  hill  and  plain.  The 
Roman  bridge  still  spanned  river  and  stream.  If 
farmer  and  landowner  had  disappeared,  farm  and  field 
remained ;  and  if  the  conquerors  settled  at  all,  it  was 
inevitable  that  they  should  settle,  in  the  bulk  of  cases, 
beside  the  homes  and  on  the  estates  of  the  men  they 
had  driven  out.  It  was  thus  that  the  Roman  “vill” 
often  became  the  English  township;  that  the  boun¬ 
daries  of  its  older  masters  remained  the  bound-marks 
of  the  new ;  that  serf  and  last  took  the  place  of  colo- 
nus  and  slave ;  while  the  system  of  cultivation  was 
probably,  in  the  case  of  both  peoples,  sufficiently  iden¬ 
tical  to  need  little  change  in  field  or  homestead.' 


1  It  is  in  this  settlement  on  the  existing  estates,  etc.,  that  we  find 


144 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Roman 

Kent. 


But  if  the  old  divisions  of  the  land  remained  to 
furnish  limits  for  the  states  of  its  conquerors,  or 
bounds  of  field  and  farm  for  their  settlers,  the  whole 
organization  of  government  and  society  had  disap¬ 
peared  with  the  men  to  whom  it  belonged.  Rome 
was  gone ;  and  its  law,  its  literature,  its  faith,  had 
gone  with  it.  The  Briton  himself  was  now  simply  a 
stranger,  gazing  back  upon  the  land  he  had  lost  from 
a  distant  frontier.  The  mosaics,  the  coins,  which 
we  dig  up  in  our  fields,  are  no  relics  of  our  fathers, 
but  of  a  world  which  our  fathers’  sword  swept  utter¬ 
ly  away.  How  thoroughly  the  work  was  done  we 
can  see  in  a  single  instance,  that  of  the  first  land 
which  the  invaders  won.  In  the  days  before  the 
Jutish  conquest,  few  parts  of  the  island  were  wealth¬ 
ier  or  more  populous  than  the  Caint  or  Kent,  the 
chalk  upland  which  jutted  into  the  Channel  between 
the  alluvial  flats  of  the  Thames  estuary  and  the 
mouth  of  the  Weald.* 1  This  district  had,  in  fact, 
been  one  of  the  earliest  points  of  human  settlement 


the  explanation  of  many  facts  adduced  by  Mr.  Coote,  in  his  various 
works,  to  prove  the  continuity  of  the  life  of  Roman  Britain. 

1  The  Roman  and  Jutish  Caint,  it  must  be  remembered,  occupied 
a  far  smaller  space  of  ground  than  our  modern  county  of  Kent;  for 
the  Weald,  as  yet  uninvaded  by  axe  or  plough,  threw  its  outskirts 
far  and  wide  over  the  country  on  the  southwest.  Kemble,  Saxons 
in  England,  i.  483,  says,  “  If  we  follow  the  main  road  from  Hythe 
to  Maidstone  a  little  to  the  north  of  Aldington  and  running  to  the 
east  of  Boughton,  we  find  a  tract  of  country  extending  to  the  bor¬ 
ders  of  Sussex  and  filled  with  places  ending  in  ‘  den  ’  or  ‘  hurst  ’  .  .  . 
along  the  edge  of  the  Weald,  within  whose  shades  the  ‘  swains  ’ 
found  ‘  mast  and  pasture.’  ”  He  enumerates  a  few  of  them  which 
form  a  belt  of  mark  or  forest  round  the  cultivated  country  quite  in¬ 
dependent  of  the  woods  which  lay  between  village  and  village. 
Even  within  the  bounds  of  the  earlier  Caint,  too,  the  space  fit  for 
habitation  was  broken  by  thick  woodlands  like  the  forest  of  Blean. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


145 


in  Britain.  In  Roman  times  its  towns  were  small  chap.  iv. 
and  unimportant:  those  of  the  coast  seem  simply  toTheSettie- 
have  been  military  stations  of  the  Saxon  Shore,  while  thlTcon- 
Durovernum  and  Durobrivas  were  little  clusters  of  querors- 
houses  that  had  grown  up  at  the  passages  of  the 
Stour  and  the  Medway.  But  in  the  valleys  of  these 
rivers  population  must  have  lain  thickly ;  even  the 
flats  along  the  coast  of  the  Thames  were  the  scene 
of  busy  industries:  and  if  the  homesteads  which 
studded  the  face  of  the  country  were  smaller  and 
less  splendid  than  those  of  Southwestern  Britain, 
their  number,  as  well  as  the  absence  of  the  military 
stations  that  were  so  abundant  elsewhere, shows  the 
peace  and  prosperity  of  a  district  which  its  position 
sheltered  from  the  Pictish  forays  that  wasted  the 
north  and  centre  of  the  island.1  The  greater  num¬ 
ber  of  such  houses  lay  along  what  had  been  the  line 
of  Hengest’s  inroad,  along  the  road  from  Canter¬ 
bury  to  London,  and  along  the  banks  of  the  Med¬ 
way.  The  fields  which  then  bordered  the  lower  val¬ 
ley  of  this  river  at  Upchurch  furnished  the  bulk  of 
the  common  hardware  used  throughout  the  country, 
and  the  extent  of  its  remains  show's  that  it  was  the 
home  of  a  large  working  population.2  Potteries 
hardly  less  extensive  existed  on  the  brink  of  Rom¬ 
ney  Marsh  ;  while  from  pits  at  Dartford,  Crayford, 
and  Chiselhurst  chalk  v?as  exported  to  Zealand,  on 
the  coast  of  which  are  still  found  altars  to  the  god¬ 
dess  of  the  Kentish  chalk-workers.3 


1  See  a  paper  on  Roman  Kent,  by  Roach  Smith,  in  Archaeol.  Can- 
tiana,  ii.  38. 

-  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  pp.  260,  261. 
s  Murray’s  Kent,  Introduction,  pp.  x„  xi. 

IO 


146 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Kent  after 
the  con¬ 
quest. 


But  with  the  conquest  of  the  Jutes  all  this  wealth 
and  industry  disappeared.  The  potteries  sank  into 
heaps  of  ruins  amidst  marshes  that  took  the  place 
of  the  meadows  in  which  they  stood.  The  country- 
houses,  as  their  ruins  show,  became  heaps  of  black¬ 
ened  stone.  The  towns  as  they  fell  beneath  the  con¬ 
queror’s  sword  were  left  burned  and  desolate.  The 
massacre  which  followed  the  victories  of  Hensest, 
indeed,  showed  the  merciless  nature  of  the  warfare 
of  the  Jutes.  While  the  wealthier  Kentish  land- 
owners  fled  in  panic  over  the  sea,  the  poorer  Britons 
took  refuge  in  hill  or  forest,  or  among  the  neighbor¬ 
ing  fastnesses  of  the  Weald,  till  hunger  drove  them 
from  their  lurking-places  to  be  cut  down  or  enslaved 
by  their  conquerors.  It  was  in  vain  that  some  sought 
shelter  within  the  walls  of  their  churches,  for  the  rage 
of  the  invaders  seems  to  have  burned  fiercest  against 
the  clergy.  The  priests  were  slain  at  the  altar,  the 
churches  fired,  the  peasants  driven  by  the  flames  to 
fling  themselves  on  a  ring  of  pitiless  steel.1  For  a 


1  Gildas,  Hist.  cap.  24,  25  :  “  Confovebatur  namque,  ultionis  justae 
praecedentium  scelerum  causa,  de  mari  usque  ad  mare  ignis  orienta- 
lis,  sacrilegorum  manu  exaggeratus,  et  finitimas  quasque  civitates 
agrosque  populans,  qui  non  quievit  accensus,  donee  cunctam  pene 
exurens  insulae  superficiem  rubra  occidentalem  trucique  oceanum 
lingua  delamberet.  .  .  .  Ita  ut  cunctae  columnae  crebris  arietibus, 
omnesque  coloni  cum  praspositis  ecclesiae,  cum  sacerdotibus  ac  po- 
pulo,  mucronibus  undique  micantibus,  ac  flammis  crepitantibus,  si- 
mul  solo  sternerentur,  et  miserabili  visu,  in  medio  platearum,  ima 
turrium  edito  cardine  evulsarum,  murorumque  celsorum  saxa,  sacra 
altaria,  cadaverum  frusta,  crustis  ac  semigelantibus  purpurei  cruoris 
tecta,  velut  in  quodam  horrendo  torculari  mixta  viderentur,  et  nulla 
esset  omnimodis,  praeter  horribiles  domorum  ruinas,  bestiarum  vo- 
lucrumque  ventres,  in  medio  sepultura.  .  .  .  Itaque  nonnulli  mise- 
rarum  reliquiarum  in  montibus  deprehensi  acervatim  jugulabantur ; 
alii  fame  confecti  accedentes,  manus  hostibus  dabant,  in  aevum  ser- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


147 


while  the  ruin  of  the  land  must  have  seemed  com¬ 
plete  ;  and  even  when  the  settlement  of  the  con¬ 
querors  had  brought  a  new  life  to  its  downs  and 
river- valleys,  the  wreck  and  solitude  of  the  towns 
bore  their  witness  to  the  completeness  with  which 
the  older  life  had  been  done  away.  Durovernum  re¬ 
mained  a  waste  till  /Ethelberht’s  day,  and  it  is  not 
till  the  eighth  century  that  we  hear  of  any  new 
dwellers  at  Dover.* 1  The  sites  of  the  deserted  cities 
passed  naturally  into  the  common  lands  of  the  Cant- 
wara,  the  folk-land  which  the  Kentish  king  took  for 
his  own  possession,  or  from  which  he  made  grants 
to  his  thegns ;  and  it  is  thus  that  if  we  look  in 
Aithelberht’s  day  for  the  site  of  Regulbium,  we  find 
it  occupied  by  the  king’s  “vill”  of  Reculver;  while 
the  Kentish  Ceatta,  no  doubt  though  a  royal  grant, 
planted  the  “  ham  ”  which  has  grown  into  our  Chat¬ 
ham  on  the  banks  of  the  Medway,  in  the  territory  of 
the  forsaken  Durobrivae.  But  even  then  he  made 
his  little  settlement  not  within,  but  without,  its  walls ; 
and  when  the  town  reappears  in  the  days  of  /Ethel- 
berht,  it  is  no  longer  under  its  old  name,  but  under 
that  of  the  Jutish  Hrof,  who  had  at  last  taken  it  for 
his  home,  as  Hrofes-ceaster,2  or  Rochester. 

As  we  stand  amidst  the  ruins  of  such  towns  or 
country-houses,  and  recall  the  wealth  and  culture  of 
Roman  Britain,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  a  conquest 


vituri,  si  tamen  non  continuo  trucidarentur,  quod  altissimae  gratiae 
stabat  in  loco ;  alii  transmarinas  petebant  regiones,  cum  ululatu 
magno  ceu  celeusmatis  vice,  .  .  .  alii  montanis  collibus,  minacibus 
praeruptis  vallati,  et  densissimis  saltibus,  marinisque  rupibus  vitam, 
suspecta  semper  mente,  credentes,  in  patria  licet  trepidi  perstabant.” 

1  Malmesbury,  Life  of  Aldhelm  (Anglia  Sacra,  ii.  20). 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  604 ;  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3. 


CHAr.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


The  new 
English 
society. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


I48 

which  left  them  heaps  of  crumbling  stones  was  other 
.  than  a  curse  to  the  land  over  which  it  passed.  But 
if  the  new  England  that  sprang  from  the  wreck  of 
Britain  seemed  for  the  moment  a  waste  from  which 
the  arts,  the  letters,  the  refinement  of  the  world,  had 
fled  hopelessly  away,  it  contained  within  itself  germs 
of  a  nobler  life  than  that  which  had  been  destroyed.1 
Here,  as  everywhere  throughout  the  Roman  world, 
the  base  of  social  life  was  the  peasant  crushed  by  a 
deepening  fiscal  tyranny  into  the  slave ;  while  the 
basis  of  political  life  was  the  hardly  less  enslaved 
proprietor,  disarmed,  bound  like  his  serf  to  the  soil, 
and  powerless  to  withstand  the  greed  of  a  govern¬ 
ment  in  which  he  took  no  part.  But,  whether  po¬ 
litically  or  socially,  the  base  of  the  new  English  soci¬ 
ety  was  the  freeman  who  had  been  tilling,  judging, 
or  fighting  for  himself  by  the  Northern  Sea.  How¬ 
ever  roughly  he  dealt  with  the  material  civilization 
of  Britain  while  the  struggle  went  on,  it  was  impos¬ 
sible  that  such  a  man  could  be  a  mere  destroyer. 
War,  in  fact,  was  no  sooner  over  than  the  warrior 
settled  down  into  the  farmer,  and  the  home  of  the 
ceorl  rose  beside  the  heap  of  goblin-haunted  stones 
that  marked  the  site  of  the  villa  he  had  burned. 

1  In  the  sketch  of  our  early  institutions,  I  have  mainly  followed 
the  guidance  of  Professor  Stubbs  through  the  chapters  which  open 
his  Constitutional  History.  It  must  be  remembered  that  we  have 
little  or  no  direct  evidence  for  such  a  sketch,  and  can  only  infer 
the  character  of  our  institutions  at  this  time,  first  from  the  tenor 
of  like  German  institutions  in  yet  earlier  days,  and,  secondly,  from 
the  character  which  English  institutions  had  themselves  assumed 
some  centuries  later,  when  we  can  trace  their  existing  form  in  the 
laws.  Although,  however,  some  details  may  still  remain  doubtful, 
the  general  accuracy  of  the  conclusions  which  historical  inquiry  has 
reached  in  this  matter  may  be  looked  on  as  established. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


149 


The  settlement  of  the  conquerors  was  as  direct  a  chap. IV- 
result  of  the  character  of  the  conquest  as  the  with- The  settle- 
drawal  of  the  conquered  people.  It  was  the  slow-  thlTcon- 
ness  of  their  advance,  the  small  numbers  of  each  querors- 
separate  band  in  its  descent  upon  the  coast,  that 
made  it  possible  for  the  invaders  to  bring  with  them, 
or  to  call  to  them  when  their  work  was  done,  the 
wives  and  children,  the  laet  and  slave,  even  the  cat¬ 
tle  they  had  left  behind  them.1  The  wave  of  con¬ 
quest  was  thus  but  a  prelude  to  the  gradual  migra¬ 
tion  of  a  whole  people.'2  For  the  settlement  of  the 
conquerors  was  nothing  less  than  a  transfer  of  Eng¬ 
lish  society  in  its  fullest  form  to  the  shores  of  Brit¬ 
ain.  It  was  England  that  settled  down  on  British 
soil — England  with  its  own  language,  its  own  laws, 
its  complete  social  fabric,  its  system  of  village  life 
and  village  culture,  its  principle  of  kinship,  its  prin¬ 
ciple  of  representation.  It  was  not  as  mere  pirates 
or  stray  war  bands,  but  as  peoples  already  made,  and 
fitted  by  a  common  temper  and  common  customs  to 
draw  together  into  one  nation  in  the  days  to  come, 
that  our  fathers  left  their  homeland  for  the  land  in 
which  we  live. 

At  first  sight,  indeed,  there  seemed  little  promise  Difficulty 
of  national  unity  in  the  mass  of  war  bands  and  folks 
that  had  taken  the  place  of  the  provincials.  One 
half  of  conquered  Britain  belonged  to  the  Engle  ;  the 
bulk  of  the  rest  had  fallen  to  the  Saxon ;  Kent  and 
the  Isle  of  Wight  belonged  to  the  Jute.  Other  peo¬ 
ples  of  the  German  coast  seem  to  have  joined  in  the 


of  union. 


1  For  the  difference  between  the  British  and  English  cattle,  see 
Boyd  Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain,  pp.  491,  492. 

a  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  72,  73. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


150 

work  of  conquest,  for  we  may  certainly  add  Frisians 
to  the  list  of  invaders,  and  probably  Franks ;  but  it 
was  only  as  individual  warriors  or  as  separate  war 
bands  that  these  can  have  joined  in  the  invasion  ;  and 
if  any  trace  of  their  settlement  existed,  it  has  whol¬ 
ly  disappeared.  But  Jute,  Engle,  and  Saxon  were 
camped  separately  on  the  land ;  nor  is  there  any 
ground  for  believing  that  in  this  earlier  time  they 
regarded  themselves  as  a  single  people.  Even  with¬ 
in  each  of  these  three  main  tribes  themselves  there 
can  have  been  little  unity  or  cohesion.  On  the  east¬ 
ern  coast  we  are  distinctly  told  that  war  band  after 
war  band  landed  under  their  own  ealdormen,  con¬ 
quered  their  own  tracts,  and  fought  with  one  anoth¬ 
er  as  well  as  with  the  Britons  before  they  were  drawn 
together  into  the  folk  of  the  East  Anglians.  How 
universal  this  state  of  things  must  have  been  we  see 
from  the  numerous  traces  of  such  small  peoples  that 
we  incidentally  meet  with  in  our  later  history.  A 
single  list,  for  instance,  which  has  been  by  chance 
preserved  to  us,  hands  down  the  names  of  some  thir¬ 
ty  tribes,  apparently  belonging,  for  the  most  part,  to 
Mid-Britain,  of  the  bulk  of  whom  all  knowledge  is 
lost,  though  a  few  can  still  be  identified  by  the  geo¬ 
graphical  character  of  their  names.1  But  for  this  we 
should  know  nothing  of  the  existence  of  the  Chiltern- 
setna,  or  people  of  the  Chilterns  ;  of  the  Elmedsetna, 
or  settlers  in  Elmet ;  of  the  Pecsetna,  or  that  branch 
of  the  Mercians  who  colonized  the  fastnesses  of  the 


1  See  this  list,  which  was  originally  printed  by  Sir  Henry  Spelman 
in  his  Glossary,  under  the  head  Hida,  in  Kemble's  Saxons  in  Eng¬ 
land,  vol.  i.  pp.  81,  82. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


15  I 

Peak;  or  the  Wrokensetna,  who  found  a  home  at 
the  base  of  the  Wrekin.1 

Sporadic  settlements  of  such  isolated  tribes,  like 
the  Meonwara  on  the  Southampton  Water,  meet  us 
constantly  in  the  course  of  our  story ;  and  the  depend¬ 
ent  kingdoms  within  the  larger  ones,  such  as  that  of 
Oidilwald  in  the  Deira  of  Oswiu’s  day,2  point  to  the 
survival  of  this  separate  life  in  one  quarter  or  anoth¬ 
er  even  when  aggregation  into  larger  groups  had  be¬ 
come  an  irresistible  tendency  in  the  people  at  large. 
Even  in  Kent,  quickly  as  it  was  organized  into  a  sin¬ 
gle  kingdom,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  conquerors  orig¬ 
inally  clustered  around  king  or  ealdorman  in  little 
groups,  which  were  only  gradually  gathered  together 
into  one  political  body.  The  dwellers  in  the  re¬ 
claimed  flats  of  Romney  Marsh,  for  instance,  were 
long  known  as  the  Merscwara,  or  Marsh-folk,  a  name 
which  points  to  a  separate  political  existence  at  some 
early  time  ;  while  along  the  coast  to  the  east  of  them 
we  find  in  the  name  of  Folkestone  the  trace  of  an¬ 
other  separate  folk,  which  may,  like  the  Merscwara, 
have  been  only  gradually  drawn  into  the  general 
community  that  knew  itself  as  the  Cantwara,  or 
dwellers  in  the  Caint.  There  are  still  stronger 
traces  of  separate  life  in  the  country  west  of  the 
Medway,  which  was  afterwards  known  as  West 
Kent.  In  Kentish  tradition,  this  tract  represented 
an  earlier  kingdom  under  the  rule  of  its  own  chief¬ 
tain,  though  dependent  on  the  Kentish  king;  and 
the  tradition  is  supported  by  the  foundation  of 

1  The  word  in  the  list  is  Wokensetna ;  but  a  Mercian  charter 
(Cod.  Dip.  277)  has  the  word  “  Wreocensetun.” 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  23. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Separate 

folks. 


152 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iv.  a  separate  bishopric  at  Rochester,  whose  prelates 
The  settle- were  dependent  on  the  Kentish  bishop  at  Canter- 
the  con-  bury. 

querors.  But  from  Bie  first  the  severance  between  such 
Real  unity,  tribes  must  have  been  rather  apparent  than  real. 
Even  in  their  German  homeland  the  ties  of  a  com¬ 
mon  blood,  common  speech,  common  social  and  po¬ 
litical  institutions,  were  drawing  the  smaller  peoples 
together  into  nations  such  as  the  Alemannians,  the 
Saxons,  and  the  Franks,  at  the  time  when  these  ad¬ 
venturers  pushed  across  the  sea  for  the  winning  of 
Britain  ;  and  the  tendency  to  union  which  they  thus 
carried  with  them  could  only  have  been  strengthened 
by  the  strife  that  followed.  Their  common  warfare 
with  the  Briton  could  not  but  unite  them  more 
closely.  If  we  judge  from  the  names  of  English 
settlements,  as  from  a  few  recorded  incidents  of  the 
struggle,  we  should  gather  that  each  people  gave 
help  to  its  fellows  in  the  course  of  the  contest ;  that 
Jutish  warriors  fought  in  the  host  of  Cerdic  as  it 
won  the  Gwent;  and  that  Saxon  war  bands  aided  in 
the  reduction  of  East  Anglia,  as  Engle  war  bands 
helped  in  the  Saxon  victory  over  the  Four  Towns. 
How  irresistible  the  tendency  towards  union  was 
from  the  very  beginning,  indeed,  we  see  from  the 
fact  that  the  separate  existence  of  the  smaller  com¬ 
munities  we  have  spoken  of  had,  for  the  most  part, 
come  to  an  end  by  the  close  of  the  sixth  century. 

1  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  vol.  i.  p.  148,  explains  by  this  sec¬ 
ond  Kentish  kingdom  the  Kentish  practice  of  two  kings  reigning 
together,  as  in  the  case  of  Eadric  and  Hlothere,  or  Wihtred  and 
AEthelberht  the  Second.  One  of  the  later  rulers,  Sigired,  calls  him¬ 
self  “King  of  half  Kent”  (Cod.  Dip.  no,  114).  Malmesbury  (Gest. 
Reg.  lib.  i.  sec.  10)  speaks  of  the  “  reguli  ”  whom  iEthelberht  subdued. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


153 


At  that  time  the  various  Jutish  tribes  of  Kent,  chap.  iv. 
whatever  may  have  been  their  original  isolation,  The  settie- 
were  definitely  fused  in  the  people  of  the  Cantwara ;  thencon- 
while  the  Chilternsetna  were  lost  in  the  W est  Sax-  queror8- 
ons,  as  the  Pecsetna  were  lost  in  the  Mercians. 

No  traces  of  the  separate  war  bands  that  conquered 
the  island-like  district  on  the  eastern  coast  of  Britain 
reach  us  in  the  recorded  annals  of  the  East  Anglians. 

When  written  history  first  shows  us  the  new  Britain 
in  the  pages  of  Baeda,  we  find  the  original  mass  of 
folks  and  war  bands  already  gathered  together  in 
some  eight  or  nine  distinct  peoples ; 1  and  even  these 
showing  a  tendency  to  group  themselves  in  three 
great  masses  which  soon  became  the  kingdoms  of 
Northern,  Central,  and  Southern  Britain.  To  bring 
these  three  masses  together  into  a  single  nation 
proved  a  longer  and  a  harder  task.  But,  distinct 
as  they  remained  for  two  hundred  years,  we  see 
no  trace  of  consciousness  of  any  race  difference 
between  them.  The  lines  of  demarcation,  indeed, 
which  divide  the  one  from  the  other  are  not  race 
lines;  the  earliest  of  these  over -kingdoms,  that  of 
Avthelberht,  embraces  Jute  and  Engle,  if  not  Saxon, 
alike  within  its  pale ;  and  in  the  later  conquest  for 
supremacy  over  Britain,  the  strife  is  not  a  twofold 
strife  between  Engle  and  Saxon,  but  a  threefold 
strife  of  a  purely  political  order,  in  which  the  Engle 
kingdoms  of  Northumbria  and  Mercia  wage  a  fiercer 
fight  against  one  another  than  that  of  either  against 
the  Saxons  of  the  south.  The  only  differences,  in 
fact,  that  we  can  find  between  the  various  peoples 


Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15. 


1 54 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Civitiza 
tion  of  the 
English. 


who  settle  over  the  face  of  Britain  are  differences  of 
dialect,  or  distinctions  in  the  form  of  a  buckle1  or 
the  shape  of  a  grave-mound.  As  early  as  Baeda’s 
day  they  had  learned  to  recognize  themselves  under 
a  single  collective  name,  as  the  people  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish.2  In  the  whole  structure  of  their  life,  political, 
social,  domestic,  religious,  all  were  at  one. 

Of  the  character  of  their  life  at  this  early  time  we 
can  only  speak  generally.  Barbarous  as  it  seemed 
to  Roman  eyes,  it  was  already  touched  by  the  civili¬ 
zation  with  which  Rome  was  slowly  transforming 
the  barbaric  world.  Even  in  their  German  home¬ 
land,  though  its  border  nowhere  touched  the  border 
of  the  Empire,  Saxon  and  Engle  were  far  from  being 
strange  to  the  arts  and  culture  of  Rome.  Roman 
commerce,  indeed,  reached  the  shores  of  the  Baltic 
along  tracks  which  had  been  used  for  ages  by  trad¬ 
ers,  whether  Etruscan 3  or  Greek ;  and  we  have 
abundant  evidence  that  the  arts  and  refinement  of 
Rome  were  brought  into  contact  with  these  men  of 
the  north.  Brooches,  sword-belts,  and  shield-bosses 
which  have  been  found  in  Sleswick,  and  which  can 
be  dated  not  later  than  the  close  of  the  third  cen¬ 
tury,  are  clearly  either  of  Roman  make  or  closely 
modelled  on  Roman  metal-work ; 4  and  discoveries 


1  Wright  (The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  pp.  481-482)  con¬ 

siders  the  round  buckles  as  peculiar  to  the  Jutes,  the  cross-shaped 
to  the  Engle. 

3  Baeda',  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  1  :  “quinque  gentium  linguis.  .  .  .  Anglorum 
videlicet,  Brittonum,  Scottorum,  Pictorum,  et  Latinorum.  Stubbs, 
Const.  Hist.  i.  143. 

3  Boyd  Dawkins,  Early  Man  in  Britain,  chap.  xiii. 

4  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  pp.  9-1 1  ;  Wright,  The  Celt,  the 
Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  p.  498. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


155 


of  Roman  coins  in  Sleswick  peat-mosses  afford  a  yet  chap.  iv. 
more  conclusive  proof  of  direct  intercourse  with  the  Thesettie- 
Empire.  But  apart  from  these  outer  influences,  the 
men  of  the  three  tribes  were  far  from  being  mere  <iuerors- 
savages.  They  were  fierce  warriors,  but  they  were 
also  busy  fishers  and  tillers  of  the  soil,  as  proud  of 
their  skill  in  handling  plough  and  mattock  or  steer¬ 
ing  the  rude  boat  with  which  they  hunted  walrus 
and  whale  as  of  their  skill  in  handling  sword  and 
spear.1  They  were  hard  drinkers,  no  doubt,  as  they 
were  hard  toilers,  and  the  “  ale-feast  ”  was  the  centre 
of  their  social  life.  But,  coarse  as  the  revel  might 
seem  to  modern  eyes,  the  scene  within  the  timbered 
hall  which  rose  in  the  midst  of  their  villages  was 
often  Homeric  in  its  simplicity  and  dignity.  Queen 
or  eorl’s  wife,  with  a  train  of  maidens,  bore  ale-bowl 
or  mead-bowl2  round  the  hall,  from  the  high  settle 
of  kin"  or  ealdorman  in  the  midst  to  the  benches 

o 

ranged  around  its  walls,  while  the  gleeman  sang  the 
hero-songs  of  his  race.  They  had  already  a  litera¬ 
ture  ;  and  though  the  Roman  missionaries  had  not 
as  yet  introduced  their  alphabet,  the  Runic  letters, 
which  these  men  shared  with  the  other  German 
races,  sufficed  to  record  on  tablets  of  oak  or  beech 
an  epic  such  as  that  of  Beowulf,  or  the  rude  annals 
which,  as  those  preserved  in  our  present  Chronicle 
show,  already  existed  as  materials  for  history.3  Dress 
and  arms  showed  traces  of  a  love  of  art  and  beauty, 


1  Beowulf,  w.  1090-1120. 

3  See  the  fine  scene  in  Beowulf,  vv.  1226-1254,  where  Hrothgar’s 
queen  bears  the  mead-cup  about  his  hall  to  the  warriors  and  the 
hero. 

3  Guest,  E.  E.  Sett.  p.  39. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Their  lit¬ 
erature. 


156 

none  the  less  real  that  it  was  rude  and  incomplete. 
Rings,  amulets,  ear-rings,  neck-pendants,  proved  in 
their  workmanship  the  deftness  of  the  goldsmith’s 
art.  Cloaks  were  often  fastened  with  golden  buckles 
of  curious  and  exquisite  form,  set  sometimes  with 
rough  jewels  and  inlaid  with  enamel.1  The  bronze 
boar-crest  on  the  warrior’s  helmet,  the  intricate  adorn¬ 
ment  of  the  warrior’s  shield,  tell,  like  the  honor  in 
which  the  smith  was  held,  their  tale  of  industrial  art.2 
The  curiously  twisted  glass  goblets,  so  common  in 
the  early  graves  of  Kent,  are  shown  by  their  form 
to  be  of  English  workmanship.3 4  It  is  only  in  the 
English  pottery,  hand-made,  and  marked  with  zig¬ 
zag  patterns,  that  we  find  traces  of  rudeness. 

The  same  indications  of  a  life  far  higher  than  that 
of  mere  barbarism  are  to  be  seen  in  their  literature. 
Among  the  scanty  relics  of  our  early  poetry,  we  still 
find  a  few  pieces  which  date  from  a  time  before  the 
conquest  of  Britain.1  Most  of  them  are  mere  frag¬ 
ments  ;  but  even  in  these  we  find  the  two  distin- 


1  Large  quantities  of  such  ornaments  have  been  found  in  the  old¬ 
er  burial-grounds,  especially  those  of  Kent.  See  the  Inventorium 

Sepulcrale  of  Bryan  Faussett  for  an  account  of  these  objects  and 
their  discovery. 

3  Beowulf,  w.  612-615.  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and  the 
Saxon,  p.486;  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  i.  280. 

3  Roach  Smith,  in  Archaeol.  Cantiana,  i.  46 ;  Wright,  The  Celt, 
the  Roman,  and  the  Saxon,  p.  495,  etc. 

4  Such  are  Deor’s  Complaint,  a  poem,  says  Mr.  Sweet  (in  his 
Sketch  of  the  History  of  Anglo-Saxon  Poetry,  in  Hazlitt’s  edition 
of  Warton’s  History  of  English  Poetry,  1871,  Preface  to  vol.  ii.),  al¬ 
most  lyric  in  its  character,  in  which  Deor,  a  poet  who  has  been 
supplanted  by  a  rival,  consoles  himself  by  the  thought  of  heroes 
who  had  borne  and  survived  greater  ills  than  he ;  the  Gleeman’s 
Tale,  which  is  possibly  a  poetic  riddle ;  and  a  fragment  on  the  at¬ 
tack  of  Fin’s  palace  in  Friesland. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


157 


guishing  features  of  our  later  verse — a  tendency  to  chap.  iv. 
melancholy  and  pathos,  and  a  keen  enjoyment  and  The  settle- 
realization  of  outer  nature/  The  one  large  and  com-  thecom 
plete  work  which  remains,  the  Song  of  Beowulf,  is  querors~ 
the  story  of  that  hero’s  deeds :  how  alone  at  night¬ 
fall,  in  King  Hrothgar’s  hall,  he  met  the  fiend  Gren- 
del,  who  for  twelve  years  had  carried  off  the  king’s 
warriors  to  devour  them  in  his  den ;  how,  to  com¬ 
plete  his  victory,  he  plunged  into  the  dreadful  lake 
where  Grendel  and  Grendel’s  mother  made  their 
dwelling,  and  brought  back  their  heads  to  Hrothgar; 
how,  himself  become  a  king,  he  is  called  in  old-age 
to  meet  a  dragon  that  assails  his  people,  forsaken  by 
his  comrades,  and,  though  victorious,  drained  of  his 
life-blood  by  the  wounds  he  receives  in  the  terrible 
grapple.  The  Song  as  we  have  it  now  is  a  poem  of 
the  eighth  century — the  work,  it  may  be,  of  some 
English  missionary  of  the  days  of  Baeda  and  Boni¬ 
face,  who  gathered  in  the  homeland  of  his  race  the 
legends  of  its  earlier  prime/  But  the  thin  veil  of 


1  See  in  Beowulf,  vv.  2719-2756,  the  description  of  Grendel’s 
abode,  that  “  hidden  land,  where  wolves  lurk ;  windy  nesses,  perilous 
fen  -  tracts,  where  the  mountain  stream,  shrouded  in  mists,  pours 
down  the  cliffs,  deep  in  earth.  Not  far  from  here  stands  the  lake 
overshadowed  with  groves  of  ancient  trees,  fast  by  their  roots. 
There  a  dread  fire  may  be  seen  every  night  shining  wondrously  in 
the  water.  The  wisest  of  the  sons  of  men  knows  not  the  bottom. 
When  the  heath-stalker,  the  strong-horned  stag,  hard  pressed  by 
the  hounds,  coursed  from  afar,  seeks  shelter  in  the  wood,  he  will 
yield  up  his  life  on  the  shore  sooner  than  plunge  in  and  hide  his 
head.  That  is  an  accursed  place;  the  strife  of  waves  rises  black 
to  the  clouds  when  the  wind  stirs  hostile  storms,  until  the  air  dark¬ 
ens,  the  heavens  shed  tears”  (Hazlitt's  Warton,  vol.  ii.  Introd.  by 
Mr.  Sweet,  p.  1 1). 

2  Mr.  Sweet  (Hazlitt’s  Warton,  vol.  ii.  p.  10)  says,  “  It  is  evident 
that  the  poem,  as  we  have  it,  has  undergone  considerable  altera- 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


!-g  the  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

Christianity  which  he  has  flung  over  it  fades  away 
as  we  follow  the  hero-legend  of  our  fathers ;  and  the 
secret  of  their  moral  temper,  of  their  conception  of 
life,  breathes  through  every  line.  Life  was  built 
with  them,  not  on  the  hope  of  a  hereafter,  but  on 
the  proud  self-consciousness  of  noble  souls.  “  I  have 
this  folk  ruled  these  fifty  winters,”1  sings  the  hero- 
king  as  he  sits,  death-smitten,  beside  the  dragon’s 
mound.  11  Lives  there  no  folk-king  of  kings  about 
me — not  any  one  of  them — dare  in  the  war-strife 
welcome  my  onset !  Time’s  change  and  chances  I 
have  abided,  held  my  own  fairly,  sought  not  to  snare 
men ;  oath  never  sware  I  falsely  against  right.  So 
for  all  this  may  I  glad  be  at  heart  now,  sick  though 
I  sit  here,  wounded  with  death  wounds !”  In  men 
of  such  a  temper,  strong  with  the  strength  of  man¬ 
hood  and  full  of  the  vigor  and  the  love  of  life,  the 
sense  of  its  shortness  and  of  the  mystery  of  it  all, 
woke  chords  of  a  pathetic  poetry.  “  Soon  will  it  be,” 
ran  the  warning  rime,  “  that  sickness  or  sword-blade 
shear  thy  strength  from  thee,  or  the  fire  ring  thee, 
or  the  flood  whelm  thee,  or  the  sword  grip  thee,  or 
arrow  hit  thee,  or  age  o’ertake  thee,  and  thine  eye’s 


tions.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  a  distinctly  Christian  element, 
contrasting  strongly  with  the  general  heathen  current  of  the  whole. 
Many  of  these  passages  are  so  incorporated  into  the  poem  that  it  is 
impossible  to  remove  them  without  violent  alterations  of  the  text ; 
others,  again,  are  palpable  interpolations.  .  .  .  Without  these  addi¬ 
tions  and  alterations,  it  is  certain  that  we  have  in  Beowulf  a  poem 
composed  before  the  Teutonic  conquest  of  Britain.  The  localities 
are  purely  Continental ;  the  scenery  is  laid  among  the  Goths  of 
Sweden  and  the  Danes;  in  the  episodes  the  Swedes,  Frisians,  and 
other  Continental  tribes  appear,  while  there  is  no  mention  of  Eng¬ 
land,  or  the  adjoining  countries  and  nations.” 

1  Beowulf,  w.  5458-5474. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


*59 


brightness  sink  down  in  darkness.”  Strong  as  he  chap.  >v- 
might  be,  man  struggled  in  vain  with  the  doom  that  The  settle- 
encompassed  him,  that  girded  his  life  with  a  thousand  thecon- 
perils  and  broke  it  at  so  short  a  span.  “To  us,”  queror5, 
cries  Beowulf,  in  his  last  fight — “  to  us  it  shall  be  as 
our  weird  betides,  that  weird  that  is  every  man’s 
lord !”  But  the  sadness  with  which  they  fronted 
the  mysteries  of  life  and  death  had  nothing  in  it  of 
the  unmanly  despair  which  bids  men  eat  and  drink, 
for  to-morrow  they  die.  Death  leaves  man  man  and 
master  of  his  fate.  The  thought  of  good  fame,  of 
manhood,  is  stronger  than  the  thought  of  doom. 

“  Well  shall  a  man  do  when  in  the  strife  he  minds 
but  of  winning  longsome  renown,  nor  for  his  life 
cares  l”1  “  Death  is  better  than  life  of  shame  !”2  cries 
Beowulf’s  sword-fellow.  Beowulf  himself  takes  up 
his  strife  with  the  fiend,  “  go  the  weird  as  it  will.”  If 
life  is  short,  the  more  cause  to  work  bravely  till  it  is 
over.  “  Each  man  of  us  shall  abide  the  end  of  his 
life-work ;  let  him  that  may  work,  work  his  doomed 
deeds  ere  death  come  !”  3 

It  is  in  words  such  as  these  that  we  must  look  for 
the  religious  temper  of  Saxon  or  Engle,  rather  than 
in  what  is  commonly  called  their  religion.  Their 
sods  were  the  same  as  those  of  the  rest  of  the  Ger- 
man  peoples ;  for  though  Christianity  had  won  over 
the  Roman  Empire,  it  had  not  penetrated  as  yet  into 
the  forests  of  the  north.  Our  own  names  for  the 
days  of  the  week  still  recall  to  us  the  deities  whom 
our  fathers  worshipped.  Wednesday  is  the  day  of 


1  Beowulf,  w.  3073-3077.  2  Beowulf,  w.  5774-5777- 

3  Beowulf,  w.  2777-2780. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


:6o  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

Woden,  the  war-god,  the  guardian  of  ways  and  boun¬ 
daries,  the  inventor  of  letters,  the  common  god  of 
the  whole  conquering  people,  and  whom  each  of  the 
conquering  tribes  held  to  be  the  first  ancestor  of  its 
kings.1  Thursday  is  the  day  of  Thunder,  the  god  of 
air  and  storm  and  rain  ;  as  Friday  is  Frea’s  day,  a 
deity  of  peace  and  joy  and  fruitfulness,  whose  em¬ 
blems  borne  aloft  by  dancing  maidens  brought  in¬ 
crease  to  every  field  and  stall  they  visited.  Satur¬ 
day  may  commemorate  an  obscure  god,  Soetere ;  and 
some  early  worship  of  sun  and  moon  perhaps  left  its 
trace  in  the  names  of  Sunday  and  Monday;2  while 
Tuesday  was  dedicated  to  Tiw,  once  (like  the  Greek 
Zeus,  with  whose  name  his  own  is  connected)  the 
god  of  the  sky,  but  who  in  later  days  sank  into  a 
dark  and  terrible  deity,  to  meet  whom  was  death. 
Behind  these  floated  dim  shapes  of  an  older  mythol¬ 
ogy  :  Eostre,  the  god  of  the  dawn  or  of  the  spring, 
who  lent  her  name  in  after -days  to  the  Christian 
festival  of  the  resurrection;  Wyrd,  the  death-god¬ 
dess,  whose  memory  lingered  long  in  the  weird  of 
northern  superstition ;  or  the  Shield  Maidens,  the 
mighty  women  who,  an  old  rime  tells  us,  “  wrought 
on  the  battle-field  their  toil,  and  hurled  the  thrilling 
javelins.”  Nearer  to  the  popular  fancy  lay  deities 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  15.  Woden  was  the  ancestor  of  the  royal 
stocks  of  Kent.  East  Anglia,  Essex,  Mercia,  Deira,  Bernicia,  by  his 
sons  Wehta,  Casere,  Seaxnote,  Weothelgeat,  Waegdaeg,  and  Baeldaeg; 
of  the  West  Saxons,  by  his  great-grandson,  Frothegar.  The  ealdor- 
men  of  the  Lindiswara  claimed  descent  from  his  son  Winta  (see 
Genealogies  in  Flor.  Wore.  ed.  Thorpe,  i.  248  et  scq.). 

a  It  is  more  probable,  however,  that  when  the  week  passed  from 
the  Roman  world  into  use  among  the  Germans,  these  three  names 
passed  with  it. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  jgj 

of  wood  and  fell,  like  Nicor,  the  water-sprite,  who  left  CHAP- 1V- 
his  name  to  our  nixies  and  “  Old  Nick,”  or  hero-gods  The  settie- 
of  legend  and  song.  In  the  star-strown  track  of  the  the^on- 
Milky-way,  our  fathers  saw  a  road  by  which  the  queror8~ 
hero-sons  of  Waetla  marched  across  the  sky,  and 
poetry  only  hardened  into  prose  when  they  trans¬ 
ferred  the  name  of  Watling  Street  to  the  great 
track-way  which  passed  athwart  the  island  they  had 
won,  from  London  to  Chester.  The  stones  of  Wey- 
land’s  Smithy  still  recall  the  days  when  the  new  set¬ 
tlers  told  one  another  on  the  conquered  ground  the 
wondrous  tale  they  had  brought  with  them  from 
their  German  home — the  tale  of  the  godlike  smith 
Weland,  who  forged  the  arms  that  none  could  blunt 
or  break,1 *  just  as  they  told  around  Wadanbury  and 
Wadanhlaew  the  strange  tale  of  Wade  and  his  boat.3 
When  men  christened  mere  and  tree  with  Scyld’s 
name,  at  Scyldsmere  and  Styldstreow,  they  must 
have  been  familiar  with  the  story  of  the  godlike 
child  who  came  over  the  waters  to  found  the  royal 
line  of  the  Gewissas.3  So  a  name  like  Hnaefs-scylf 
shows  that  the  tale  of  Hnaef  was  then  a  living  part 
of  English  mythology;4  and  a  name  like  Aylesbury 
may  preserve  the  last  trace  of  the  legend  told  of 
Weland’s  brother,  the  sun-archer  yEgil. 

But  it  is  only  in  broken  fragments  that  this  mass 
of  early  faith  and  early  poetry  still  lives  for  us,  in  a 


1  For  Weland’s  story,  see  Exeter  Book,  p.  367  ;  and  Kemble,  Sax¬ 
ons  in  England,  vol.  i.  p.  421. 

5  For  Wade,  see  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  vol.  i.  p.  420. 

3  For  Scyld’s  tale,  see  Beowulf,  w.  7-104.  HJthelheard,  book  iii. 
Malmesbury,  Gesta  Regum,  lib.  ii.  p.  1 16.  Kemble,  Saxons  in  Eng¬ 
land,  vol.  i.  p.  414. 

*  Hnaef,  see  Beowulf,  line  2130  et  seq. 


162 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Its  weak 
hold  on 
English¬ 
men. 


name,  in  the  gray  stones  of  a  cairn,  or  in  snatches 
of  verse  embodied  in  our  older  song.  Like  all  an¬ 
cient  religion,  indeed,  such  a  faith,  linking  itself  as  it 
did  with  the  new  settlers  mainly  through  the  blood 
of  their  kings,  embodied  only  in  nature -myths  or 
poetic  legends,  and  without  any  moral  significance 
for  the  guidance  of  men,  had  in  it  little  of  what  the 
modern  world  means  by  a  religion ;  and  the  faint 
traces  of  worship  or  of  priesthood  which  we  find  in 
later  history  show  how  lightly  it  clung  to  the  na¬ 
tional  life.  There  were  temples,  indeed,  as  we  see 
in  Kent,  in  Northumbria,  and  in  East  Anglia  alike1 
— rough  wooden  buildings  in  a  hallowed  enclosure, 
whose  name  of  frith-geard,  or  peace-yard,  tells  of  a 
right  of  sanctuary,  and  whose  inner  shrine  enclosed 
images  or  emblems  of  the  gods  with  altars  before 
them.  But  at  the  conversion  such  buildings  were 
changed,  with  no  apparent  shock  to  the  popular 
conscience,  into  Christian  churches ;  and  that  right 
of  sanctuary  which  the  frith-geard  possessed  still 
clung  to  it  under  its  new  name  of  church -yard. 
There  were  priests,  too,  whom  custom  forbade  to 
wield  the  warrior’s  weapon  or  to  mount  the  war¬ 
rior’s  horse,  but  who  played  a  prominent  part  not 
only  in  the  religious,  but  in  the  civil,  life  of  their 
fellow-tribesmen.''  The  story,  however,  of  the  con¬ 
version  of  Britain  to  Christianity,  which  we  have 
soon  to  follow,  shows  how  little  religious  weight 
or  influence  these  priests  possessed.  Only  one  of 
them,  indeed,  is  mentioned  as  playing  a  part  in  the 

1  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  30;  ii.  13,  15. 

3  Eddi’s  Life  of  Wilfred,  cap.  1  (Raine,  Historians  of  Church  of 
York,  p.  20). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


163 

religious  change,  and  he  is  an  active  agent  in  pro-  chap. 1V- 
moting  it.‘  The  Settle- 

The  weak  hold  of  their  religion  on  the  new  set-  thencon- 
tlers  strikes  us  as  forcibly  when  we  see  how  feebly  querors- 
their  faith  stamped  itself  on  the  face  of  the  conquered  Soil- 
country.  Woden,  indeed,  the  god  of  the  race,  left 
his  name  everywhere — on  brook  and  pool  and  ford, 
on  tree  and  barrow.1 2 3  We  hear  his  name  in  Wans- 
brook  or  Woden’s  brook,  in  Wanspool  and  Wans- 
ford,  as  in  Woden’s  tree  or  Wanstreow,  and  Woden’s 
barrow  or  Wanborough.  Above  all,  as  the  border- 
god,  he  hallows  the  boundary-lines  that  part  tribe 
from  tribe,  or  conquered  from  conqueror.  The  long 
dyke  that  stretches  from  a  point  just  south  of 
Malmesbury  by  Bath  to  the  Bristol  Channel,  which 
had  been  a  bound  of  the  Belgm,  and  served  for  a 
while  as  a  bound  of  the  West  Saxon,  still  retains 
the  name  which  the  last  conquerors  gave  it,  of  the 
Woden’s  Dyke  or  Wansdyke.  At  an  earlier  stage 
of  their  advance,  the  Gewissas  had  halted  on  the 
crest  of  the  great  escarpment  of  the  Wiltshire  Downs, 
and  here  Wanborough,  looking  out  over  the  valley 
of  the  White  Horse,  marks  the  limits  of  Cynric’s 
conquests.2  But  of  his  fellow-deities  the  traces  are 
few.  Thunder  leaves  signs  of  his  worship  in  places 
like  Thundersfield  or  Thundersley ;  and  Pol,  as  the 
god  whom  the  Northmen  called  Balder  may  have 


1  Coifi,  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  13. 

5  I  follow  here  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  vol.  i.  cap.  12. 

3  We  may  add  Wanborough,  on  the  Hog’s -Back  of  the  north 
downs,  a  spot  which,  “  in  all  probability,  has  been  a  sacred  site  for 
every  religion  which  has  been  received  into  Britain  ”  (Kemble, 
vol.  i.  p.  344). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


The  Eng¬ 
lish  as 
"warriors. 


164 

been  styled  on  English  ground,  still  lingers  about 
us  in  our  Polsteads  and  Poldons,  our  Polsleys  and 
Polthorns.  Even  the  lesser  deities  or  fiends  of 
popular  fancy  found  hardly  more  numerous  homes. 
Here  and  there  a  few  names  preserve  the  memo¬ 
ry  of  the  sacred  stone  or  mere  or  tree  or  mound 
where  men  reverenced,  of  old,  Scyld,  the  hero-child; 
or  /Egil,  the  sun -archer;  or  shuddered  at  Grendel, 
the  fiend.  But,  like  the  names  of  greater  gods, 
such  names  are  thinly  scattered  over  the  soil.  We 
feel  as  we  glean  them  that  we  are  not  in  presence 
of  an  indigenous  religion ;  and  it  may  be  that  in 
the  weakness  of  its  grip  on  the  soil  to  which  it  had 
been  transplanted  we  see  one,  at  least,  of  the  causes 
why  the  faith  of  the  English  yielded  so  easily  to  the 
Christian  missionaries. 

Of  their  military  life  we  naturally  know  more  than 
of  their  religious.  We  meet  them  first  as  seamen, 
and,  in  spite  of  hasty  assertions  to  the  contrary,  there 
never  was  a  time  from  that  age  to  this  when  Eng¬ 
lishmen  lost  their  love  for  the  sea.1  Everywhere 
throughout  Beowulf's  Song,  as  everywhere  through¬ 
out  the  life  that  it  pictures,  we  catch  the  salt  whiff 
of  the  sea.  The  warrior  is  as  proud  of  his  sea-craft 
as  of  his  war-craft ;  sword  in  hand,  he  plunges  into 
the  waves  to  meet  walrus  and  sea-lion  ;  he  tells  of 
his  whale-chase  amid  the  icy  waters  of  the  north.3 
The  same  seafaring  temper  shows  itself  in  later 
days  in  the  very  names  of  the  bark  that  traverses 
the  sea.  In  the  fond  playfulness  of  English  verse  the 

1  The  common  statement  which  attributes  our  love  of  the  sea  to 
the  coming  of  the  Danes  is  a  simple  error. 

5  Beowulf,  w.  1070-1120. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


165 

ship  became  the  “wave-floater,"  the  “  foam-necked,"  CHAP- 1V- 
“like  a  bird”  as  it  skimmed  the  wave-crest,  “like  aTheSetue- 
swan  ”  as  its  curved  prow  breasted  the  swan-road  thecon- 
of  the  sea.  With  their  landing  in  Britain,  however,  querors’ 
the  purely  seafaring  life  of  the  pirates  was  over,  but 
they  showed  themselves  none  the  less  formidable  as 
warriors  on  land.  In  his  own  eyes,  indeed,  every 
one  of  the  conquerors  of  Britain  was,  above  all,  a 
warrior.  The  real  opening  of  his  life,  his  passing 
from  boyhood  to  manhood,  was  the  day  when,  at  the 
age  of  fifteen,1  the  delivery  of  arms  to  him  made  him 
a  full  member  of  the  folk,  as  it  made  him  a  warrior 
of  the  host,  or  folk  in  arms.  The  armor  of  such 
a  freeman  has  been  preserved  for  us  in  the  grave- 
mounds  which  are  scattered  over  the  face  of  Eng¬ 
land  :  the  coat  of  ringed  mail;2  the  long  iron  sword3 
with  its  single  edge,  its  hilt  curiously  wrought  of 
silver  or  bronze,  or  scored  with  mystic  runes,4  its 
wooden  scabbard  tipped  and  edged  with  bronze ; 

1  At  twelve  (LI.  Hloth.  et  Ead.  6) ;  then  at  twelve  (HJthelstan  II. 
cap.  1);  and  then  at  fifteen  (Aithelstan  VI.  cap.  12).  (Thorpe’s  An¬ 
cient  Laws,  vol.  i.  pp.  31,  199,  241.) 

2  See  Beowulf,  v.  673,  for  the  warrior’s  “  gray  sarks and  cf.  Laws 
of  Ine,  p.  54  (Thorpe’s  Ancient  Laws,  vol.  i.  p.  139). 

3  “In  the  large  broadsword  may  be  recognized  the  ‘spatha’  in 
common  use  by  many  of  the  Roman  auxiliaries,  and  by  the  Ro¬ 
mans  themselves  in  later  times.  From  their  weight  and  length,  they 
could  only  be  wielded  by  horsemen  ”  (Roach  Smith,  on  “Anglo-Saxon 
Remains  at  Faversham,”etc.,  Archseol.  Cantiana,  i.47).  “The  spear 
may  be  called  the  national  weapon  ”  (ibid.).  In  the  English  grave- 
grounds  two  kinds  of  spears  are  found — one  like  the  Roman  pilum  ; 
another  smaller  and  slighter,  like  the  framea  of  Tacitus,  which  was 
part  of  the  equipment  of  horsemen.  The  spear  was  valued  above 
the  sword.  Ine’s  Laws,  p.  29  (Thorpe’s  Ancient  Laws,  vol.  i.  p.  121). 

*  Beowulf,  v.  3393 :  “  So  was  on  the  surface  of  the  bright  gold, 
with  Runic  letters  rightly  marked,  set,  and  laid,  for  whom  that  sword 
was  first  made,  with  hilt  twisted  and  variegated  like  a  snake.” 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


Life  itself 
warlike. 


j66  the  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

the  short  seax,  at  once  dagger  and  knife,  slung  like 
the  sword  from  the  girdle ;  the  long  ashen  spear ; 
the  small  round  “war-board,”  or  shield,  of  the  yellow 
lime-wood,  with  its  iron  boss,  which  was  held  in  the 
warrior’s  hand ;  the  skullcap,  or  helmet,  with  the 
iron-wrought  figure  of  a  boar  above  it.  From  the 
day  of  his  arming  with  arms  such  as  these,  the  train¬ 
ing  of  the  freeman  was  in  war.1  His  very  sports 
were  of  warlike  sort.  The  wolf  was  still  common ; 
the  bear  yet  lingered  in  the  woods ;  the  wild  boar, 
roused  from  its  lair,  rushed  madly  on  the  huntsman ; 
the  wild  ox  stood  at  bay  in  the  forest  depths.  Often 
the  chase  was  a  mimic  war ;  the  wood  was  surround¬ 
ed,  and  wild  beast  and  deer  were  driven  by  the  serfs 
into  high-fenced  enclosures,  where  the  nobler  hunts¬ 
men  with  bow  and  hunting-spear  slew  them  at  will. 

But  this  mimicry  of  war  had  soon  to  be  exchanged 
for  war  itself.  The  world  of  these  men  was,  in  fact, 
a  world  of  warfare ;  tribe  warred  with  tribe,  and  vil¬ 
lage  with  village;  even  within  the  village  itself  feuds 
parted  household  from  household,  and  passions  of 
hatred  and  vengeance  were  handed  on  from  father 
to  son.  To  live  at  all,  indeed,  in  this  early  world,  it 
was  needful,  if  not  to  fight,  at  any  rate  to  be  ready 
to  fight.  It  was  by  his  own  right  hand  that  a  man 
kept  life  and  goods  together;  it  was  his  own  right 
hand  that  guarded  him  from  wrong,  or  avenged  him 
if  wrong  were  done.  Law  had  not  as  yet  trodden 

1  For  early  English  arms,  see  Wright,  The  Celt,  the  Roman,  and 
the  Saxon,  pp.  470-478.  The  type  of  arms  remained  unaltered  till 
the  coming  of  the  Danes.  The  axe,  which  was  common  enough 
among  the  Franks,  is  but  seldom  found  even  in  Kent;  elsewhere 
it  is  of  the  rarest  occurrence.  Arrow  -  heads,  too,  though  some¬ 
times  found,  are  rare. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


167 

the  blood-feud  underfoot,  or  undertaken  the  task  of  chap.iv. 
carrying  its  own  dooms  into  effect;  it  had  done  lit- The settie- 
tle  more  than  give  form  to  the  right  of  personal  thencon- 
vengeance.1  And  besides  the  world  of  social  strife,  querors- 
there  was  the  wider  field  of  public  war,  the  fight  of 
tribe  with  tribe,  and  people  with  people.  It  was  by 
no  chance  that  the  folk,  when  it  gathered  to  the 
folk-moot,  gathered  in  arms,2  that  even  the  deliber¬ 
ations  of  the  assembled  tribesmen  were  the  “  rede  ” 
of  warriors,  and  that  the  “  ay,  ay,”  with  which  they 
approved  the  counsel  of  the  ealdormen  was  half- 
drowned  by  the  clash  of  spear  on  shield.  The  very 
form  of  a  people  was  wholly  military.  The  folk- 
moot  was,  in  fact,  the  war  host,  the  gathering  of 
every  freeman  of  the  tribe  in  arms.  The  head  of 
the  folk,  whether  ealdorman  or  king,  was  the  leader 
whom  the  host  chose  to  command  it.  Its  Wite- 
nagemote,  or  meeting  of  wise  men,  was  the  host’s 
council  of  war,  the  gathering  of  those  ealdormen  who 
had  brought  the  men  of  their  villages  to  the  field. 

The  host  was  formed  by  levies  from  the  various  The  host. 
districts  of  the  tribe,  the  larger  of  which  may  have 
owed  their  name  of  “  hundreds  ”  to  the  hundred  war¬ 
riors  which  each  originally  sent  to  it.3  In  historic 
times,  however,  the  regularity  of  such  a  military  or¬ 
ganization,  if  it  ever  existed,  had  passed  away,  and 
the  quotas  varied  with  the  varying  custom  of  each 
district.  But  men,  whether  many  or  few,  were  still 
due  from  each  district  to  the  host,  and  a  cry  of  war 
at  once  called  tun -reeve  and  hundred -reeve  with 


1  “  Essays  in  Anglo-Saxon  Law,”  cap.  iv.  Legal  Procedure. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  32. 

3  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  81,  112. 


i68 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


their  followers  to  the  field.  However  rude  such  a 
military  organization  may  seem,  it  had  in  it  qualities 
which  no  soldier  will  undervalue.  Each  group  of 
warrior-kinsmen  who  fought  in  loose  order  round 
ealdorman  or  lord  was  bound  together  by  the  tie  of 
blood,  by  the  mutual  trust  of  men  who  had  been  life¬ 
long  comrades,  by  a  life-long  practice  in  arms,  and 
by  the  discipline  that  comes  of  obedience  habitually 
rendered  to  one  who  was  recognized  as  a  natural 
chief.  But  the  strength  of  an  English  army  lay  not 
only  in  these  groups  of  villagers.  Mingled  with 
them  were  the  voluntary  war  bands  that  gathered 
round  distinguished  chiefs.  From  the  earliest  times 
of  German  society,  it  had  been  the  wont  of  young 
men  greedy  of  honor  or  seeking  training  in  arms 
to  bind  themselves  as  “  comrades  ”  to  king  or  chief.1 
The  leader  whom  they  chose  gave  them  horses, 
arms,  a  seat  in  his  mead  hall,  and  gifts  from  his 
hoard.  The  “  comrade,”  on  the  other  hand  —  the 
gesith  or  thegn,  as  he  was  called  —  bound  himself 
to  follow  and  fight  for  his  lord.  The  principle  of 
personal  dependence  as  distinguished  from  the  war¬ 
rior’s  general  duty  to  the  folk  at  large  was  embodied 
in  the  thegn.  “  Chieftains  fight  for  victory,”  says 
Tacitus;  “comrades  for  their  chieftain.”  When  one 
of  Beowulf’s  “  comrades  ”  saw  his  lord  hard  bestead, 
“  he  minded  him  of  the  homestead  he  had  given  him, 
of  the  folk-right  he  gave  him  as  his  father  had  it; 
nor  might  he  hold  back  then.”  Snatching  up  sword 
and  shield,  he  called  on  his  fellow-thegns  to  follow 
him  to  the  fight.  “  I  mind  me  of  the  day,”  he  cried, 


1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  27. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


169 

“  when  we  drank  the  mead — the  day  we  gave  pledge  CHAP- IV- 
to  our  lord  in  the  beer  -  hall  as  he  gave  us  these  The  settie- 
rings,  our  pledge  that  we  would  pay  him  back  our  thenconf 
war-gear,  our  helms  and  our  hard  swords,  if  need  querors- 
befell  him.  Unmeet  is  it,  methinks,  that  we  should 
bear  back  our  shields  to  our  home  unless  we  guard 
our  lord’s  life.”  1 

It  was  this  military  organization  of  the  tribe  that  Organiza- 

,  r  -  c  1  .  ..  tion  of  the 

gave  from  the  first  its  form  to  the  civil  organization,  state. 
In  each  of  the  little  kingdoms  which  rose  on  the 
wreck  of  Britain,  the  host  would  camp  on  the  land  it 
had  won,  and  the  divisions  of  the  host  supplied  here, 
as  in  its  older  home,  a  rough  groundwork  of  local 
distribution.  The  land  occupied  by  the  hundred 
warriors  who  formed  the  unit  of  military  organiza¬ 
tion  became, perhaps, the  local  hundred;  though  it  is 
needless  to  attach  any  notion  of  precise  uniformity, 
either  in  the  number  of  settlers  or  in  the  area  of 
their  settlement,  to  such  a  process  as  this,  any  more 
than  to  the  army  organization  which  the  process  of 
distribution  reflected."  From  the  large  amount  of 
public  land  which  we  find  existing  afterwards,  it  has 
been  conjectured,  with  some  probability,  that  the 
number  of  settlers  was  far  too  small  to  occupy  the 
whole  of  the  country  at  their  disposal,  and  this  un¬ 
occupied  ground  became  “  folk -land,”  the  common 
property  of  the  tribe,  as  at  a  later  time  of  the  na¬ 
tion.3  What  ground  was  actually  occupied  may 
have  been  assigned  to  each  group  and  each  family 
in  the  group  by  lot ;  and  the  little  knots  of  kinsmen 


1  Beowulf,  v.  5259  et  scq.  2  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  81,  82. 

s  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  82. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


170 

drew  again  together  in  “  tun  ”  and  “  ham  ”  beside  the 
Thames  or  the  Trent,  as  they  had  settled  beside  the 
Elbe  or  the  Weser.  But  the  peculiar  shape  which 
the  civil  organization  of  these  communities  assumed 
was  determined  by  a  principle  familiar  to  the  Ger¬ 
manic  races  and  destined  to  exercise  a  vast  influence 
on  the  future  of  mankind.  This  was  the  principle 
of  representation.  The  four  or  ten  villagers  who 
followed  the  reeve  of  each  township  to  the  general 
muster  of  the  hundred  were  held  to  represent  the 
whole  body  of  the  township  from  whence  they  came.1 
Their  voice  was  its  voice,  their  doing  its  doing,  their 
pledge  its  pledge.  The  hundred-moot — a  moot  which 
was  made  by  this  gathering  of  the  representatives  of 
the  townships  that  lay  within  its  bounds — became  in 
this  way  a  court  of  appeal  from  the  moots  of  each 
separate  village,  as  well  as  of  arbitration  in  dispute 
between  township  and  township.  The  judgment  of 
graver  crimes  and  of  life  or  death  fell  to  its  share ; 
while  it  necessarily  possessed  the  same  right  of  law¬ 
making  for  the  hundred  that  the  village-moot  pos¬ 
sessed  for  each  separate  village.2  And  as  hundred- 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  103. 

5  For  the  hundred-moot,  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  119,  120.  He 
adds,  “  In  the  south  of  England  the  names  of  the  hundreds  are  often 
derived  from  those  of  the  central  towns ;  but  in  the  midland  and 
northern  districts  they  seem  like  echoes  of  a  wilder  and  more  prim¬ 
itive  society.  The  Yorkshire  wapentake  of  Skyrack  recalls  the 
Shire  Oak  as  the  place  of  meeting ;  so  in  Derbyshire  we  have  Ap- 
pletree ;  in  Hertfordshire,  Edwinstree ;  in  Herefordshire,  Webtree 
and  Greytree ;  in  Worcestershire,  Dodingtree ;  in  Leicestershire, 
Gartree.  Osgodcross,  Ewcross,  Staincross,  Buckross,  mark  centres 
of  jurisdiction  which  received  names  after  the  acceptance  of  Chris¬ 
tianity.  Claro  or  Clarhow,  in  Yorkshire,  was  the  moot-hill  of  its 
wapentake ;  similarly,  Leicestershire  has  Sparkinho ;  Norfolk, 
Greenho  and  Grimshoe  ;  and  Lincolnshire,  Calnodshoe.  Others 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  71 

moot  stood  above  town-moot,  so  far  above  the  hun-  chap.  iv. 
dred-moot  stood  the  folk-moot,  the  general  muster  The  settie- 
of  the  people  in  arms,  at  once  war  host  and  highest  thecon- 
law-court  and  general  parliament  of  the  tribe.  But,  queror8- 
whether  in  folk-moot  or  hundred-moot,  the  consti¬ 
tutional  forms,  the  forms  of  deliberation  and  decision, 
were  the  same.  In  each  the  priests  proclaimed  si¬ 
lence;  the  ealdormen  of  higher  blood  spoke ;  groups 
of  freemen  from  each  township  stood  round,  shaking 
their  spears  in  assent,  clashing  shields  in  applause, 
settling  matters  in  the  end  by  loud  shouts  of  “  Ay  ” 
or  “  Nay.’’*  1 

It  seems  probable  that  the  conquering  tribes  had  The  king. 
hitherto  known  nothing  of  kings  in-  their  own  father- 
land,  where  each  was  satisfied  in  peace  time  with  the 
customary  government  of  hundred-reeve  or  ealdor- 
man,  while  it  gathered  at  fighting  times  under  war 
leaders  whom  it  chose  for  each  campaign.  But  in 
the  long  and  obstinate  warfare  which  they  waged 
against  the  Britons,  it  was  needful  to  find  a  common 
leader  whom  the  various  tribes  engaged  in  conquests, 
such  as  those  of  Wessex  or  Mercia,  might  follow; 
and  the  ceaseless  character  of  a  struggle  which  left 
few  intervals  of  rest  or  peace  raised  these  leaders 
into  a  higher  position  than  that  of  temporary  chief¬ 
tains.  It  was,  no  doubt,  from  this  cause  that  we  find 
Hengest  and  his  son  Aise  raised  to  the  kingdom  in 
Kent,  or  Aille  in  Sussex,  or  Cerdic  and  Cynric 


preserve  the  names  of  some  ancient  lord  or  hero,  as  the  Worcester¬ 
shire  Oswaldslaw,  and  the  Lincolnshire  Aslacoe ;  or  the  holy  well, 
as  the  Yorkshire  Hallikeld.  The  Suffolk  Thingoe  preserves  a  rem¬ 
iniscence  of  the  court  itself  as  the  Thing.” 

1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  32. 


172 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iv.  among  the  West  Saxons.  But,  sprung  as  he  was 
The  settle-  from  war,  the  king  was  no  mere  war  leader,  nor  was 
the  con-  he  chosen  on  the  ground  of  warlike  merit.  His 
querors.  0fftce  was  not  military,  but  national ;  his  creation 
marked  the  moment  when  the  various  groups  of 
conquering  warriors  felt  the  need  of  a  collective  and 
national  life ;  and  the  ground  of  his  choice  was  his 
descent  from  the  national  god,  Woden.  As  repre¬ 
senting  this  national  life,  his  rank  was  a  permanent, 
not  a  temporary,  one  ;  and  the  association  of  son  with 
father  in  the  new  kingship  marked  the  hereditary 
character  which  distinguished  it  from  the  office  of 
an  ealdorman.1  The  change  was  undoubtedly  a 
great  one,  but  it  was  less  than  the  modern  concep¬ 
tion  of  kingship  would  lead  us  to  imagine.  Hered¬ 
itary  as  the  succession  was  within  a  single  house, 
each  successive  king  was  still  the  free  choice  of  his 
people,  and  for  centuries  to  come  it  was  held  within 
a  people’s  right  to  pass  over  a  claimant  too  weak  or 
too  wicked  for  the  throne.  In  war,  indeed,  the  king 
was  supreme ;  but  in  peace  his  power  was  narrowly 
bounded  by  the  customs  of  his  people  and  the  rede 
of  his  wise  men.  Justice  was  not  as  yet  the  king’s 
justice  ;  it  was  the  justice  of  village  and  hundred  and 
folk  in  town-moot  and  hundred-moot  and  folk-moot. 
It  was  only  with  the  assent  of  the  wise  men  that  the 
king  could  make  laws  and  declare  war,  and  assign 
public  lands  and  name  public  officers.  Above  all, 
should  his  will  be  to  break  through  the  free  customs 
of  his  people,  he  was  without  the  means  of  putting 
his  will  into  action,  for  the  one  force  he  could  call  on 


1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  75-77. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


1 73 

was  the  host,  and  the  host  was  the  people  itself  in 
arms. 

Directly,  therefore,  the  new  kingship  made  as  yet 
little  change  in  the  political  life  of  the  conquering 
peoples;  but  indirectly  it  brought  about  from  the 
first  a  great  social  change.  An  English  community 
knew  but  two  orders  of  men — the  ceorl  or  the  free¬ 
man,  and  the  eorl  or  the  noble.1 * *  The  freeman  was 
the  base  of  the  village  society.  He  was  the  “  free¬ 
necked  man,”  whose  long  hair  floated  over  a  neck 
which  had  never  bowed  to  a  lord.  He  was  the 
“  weaponed  man,”  who  alone  bore  spear  and  sword, 
and  who  alone  preserved  that  right  of  self-redress  or 
private  war  which  in  such  a  state  of  society  formed 
the  main  check  upon  lawless  outrage.5  But  the  so¬ 
cial  centre  of  the  village  was  the  eorl  (or,  as  he  was 
sometimes  called,  the  aetheling),  whose  homestead 
rose  high  above  the  lowlier  dwellings  of  the  ceorls. 
It  is  possible  that  in  the  original  formation  of  Ger¬ 
man  society  the  eorl  represented  the  first  settler  in 
the  waste,  while  the  ceorls  sprang  from  descendants 
of  this  early  settler  who  had  in  various  ways  forfeited 
their  claim  to  a  share  in  the  original  homestead,  or, 
more  probably,  from  incomers  into  the  village  who 
had  since  settled  round  it  and  been  admitted  to  a 
share  in  the  land  and  freedom  of  the  community. 
But  whatever  may  have  been  the  origin  of  the  dis¬ 
tinction  between  freeman  and  noble,  it  had  become 
a  fixed  element  of  their  social  order  at  the  time  when 
Engle  and  Saxon  crossed  into  Britain.  In  every 

i  Laet  and  slave,  of  whom  we  speak  later,  did  not  belong  to  the 

community. 

s  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  i.  131. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Eorl  and 
ceorl. 


1 74 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^iv.  new  settlement  the  eorl  was  distinguished  from  his 
The  settle- fellow-villagers  by  his  wealth  and  his  nobler  blood; 
the  con-  he  was  held  by  them  in  an  hereditary  reverence,  and 
querors.  jj-  was  from  him  anc{  his  fellow-nobles  that  host  lead¬ 
ers,  whether  of  the  hundred  or  the  tribe,  were  chosen 
in  times  of  war. 

The  thegn.  But  with  the  rise  of  kingship  a  new  social  distinc¬ 
tion  began  to  grow  up  on  the  ground,  not  of  heredi¬ 
tary  rank  in  the  community,  but  of  service  done  to 
the  king.  It  was  from  among  the  chiefs  whose  war 
band  was  strongest  that  the  leaders  of  the  host  were 
commonly  chosen ;  and  as  these  leaders  grew  into 
kings,  the  number  of  their  thegns  naturally  increased. 
The  rank  of  the  “  comrades,”  too,  rose  with  the  rise 
of  their  lord.  The  king’s  thegns  were  his  body¬ 
guard,  the  one  force  ever  ready  to  carry  out  his 
will.  They  were  his  nearest  and  most  constant 
counsellors.  As  the  gathering  of  petty  tribes  into 
larger  kingdoms  swelled  the  number  of  eorls  in  each 
realm,  and  in  a  corresponding  degree  diminished 
their  social  importance,  it  raised  in  equal  measure 
the  rank  of  the  king’s  thegns.  A  post  among  them 
was  soon  coveted  and  won  by  the  greatest  and  no¬ 
blest.  Their  service  was  rewarded  by  exemption 
from  the  general  jurisdiction  of  hundred -moot  or 
folk-moot,  for  it  was  part  of  a  thegn’s  meed  for  his 
service  that  he  should  be  judged  only  by  the  lord  he 
served.  Other  meed  was  Jound  in  grants  of  public 
land  which  made  thegns  a  local  nobility,  no  longer 
bound  to  actual  service  in  the  king’s  household  or 
in  the  king’s  war  band,  but  still  bound  to  him  by 
personal  ties  of  allegiance  far  closer  than  those 
which  bound  an  eorl  to  the  chosen  war  leader  of  his 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


175 


tribe.  In  a  word,  thegnhood  contained  within  itself  chap.  iv. 
the  germ  of  the  later  feudalism  which  was  to  battle  The  settle 
so  fiercely  with  the  Teutonic  freedom  out  of  which  thecon- 
it  grew.1  <iue!Ma- 

To  view,  however,  the  new  settler  in  Britain  sim-  The  town 
ply  as  a  warrior  would  be  false  and  incomplete.  sh‘p' 
In  the  old  world,  the  divorce  which  modern  society 
has  established  between  the  soldier  and  the  citizen, 
the  fighter  and  the  toiler,  did  not  exist.  No  chasm 
parted  war  from  civil  life ;  the  solemn  arming  made 
the  young  Englishman  not  only  a  warrior,  but  a  free¬ 
man,1 2  a  man  of  the  folk,  a  tiller  with  a  right  to  his 
share  in  field  and  pasture  and  waste,  a  ruler  of  his 
village,  with  his  own  due  place  in  village-moot  and 
hundred-moot.  The  unit  of  social  life,  indeed,  was 
the  cluster  of  such  farmers’  homes,  each  set  in  its 
own  little  croft,  which  made  up  the  township,  or  the 
tun.  The  tun  was  surrounded  by  an  earthen  mound 
tipped  with  a  stockade  or  quickset  hedge,  as  well  as 
defended  externally  by  a  ditch;3  and  each  township 
was  thus  a  ready-made  fortress  in  war,  while  in  peace 
its  entrenchments  were  serviceable  in  the  feuds  of 
village  with  village,  or  house  with  house.  The  im¬ 
portance  of  its  defences,  indeed,  was  shown  by  the 
customary  law  which  forced  every  dweller  within 


1  For  thegnhood,  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  27,  28,  175-185  ;  Kem¬ 
ble,  Saxons  in  England,  i.  162  et  seq. 

2  “  The  young  men  are,  till  they  are  admitted  to  the  use  of  arms, 
members  of  the  family  only,  not  of  the  State’’  (Stubbs,  Const.  Hist, 
i.  24). 

3  “The  tun,”  says  Professor  Stubbs  (Const.  Hist.  i.  93,  note),  “  is 
originally  the  enclosure  or  hedge,  whether  of  the  single  farm  or  the 
enclosed  village ;  as  the  burh  is  the  fortified  house  of  the  power¬ 
ful  man.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


176 

them  to  take  part  in  their  rearing  and  repair.'  In¬ 
side  the  mound  lay  the  homes  of  the  villagers,  the 
farmsteads,  with  their  barns  and  cattle  stalls  ;  and  in 
the  centre  of  them  rose  the  sacred  tree  or  mound 
where  the  village  with  its  elders  met  in  the  tun-moot, 
which  gave  order  to  their  social  and  industrial  life. 
Outside  the  mound,  in  close  neighborhood  to  the 
village,  lay  the  home  pastures  and  folds,  where  the 
calves  and  lambs  of  individual  cultivators  were  reared. 
In  these,  and  in  the  “  yrfeland,”  or  “family  estate,” 
held  apart  from  the  lands  of  his  fellow-freeman  by  the 
aetheling,  or  noble,1 2  we  find  the  first  traces  of  a  per¬ 
sonal  property  strongly  in  contrast  with  the  common 
holding  which  prevailed  through  the  rest  of  the  town¬ 
ship.3  Beyond  and  around  these  home  pastures  lay 
the  village  ploughland,  generally  massed  together  in 
three  or  four  large  “  fields,”  each  of  which  was  broken 
by  raised  balks  into  long  strips  of  soil  that  were  dis¬ 
tributed,  in  turn,  among  the  village  husbandmen. 
The  whole  was  enclosed  by  a  borderland  or  mark, 
which  formed  the  common  pasture  where  flock  and 
herd  could  be  turned  out  by  every  freeman  to  graze, 
though  in  numbers  determined  by  usage  or  the  rede 
of  the  village-moot.4 


1  Laws  of  Aithelstan  I.  cap.  13;  Thorpe’s  Laws  and  Institutes,  i. 
207  ;  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  87. 

2  Essays  in  Anglo-Saxon  Law  (Boston,  1876),  p.  55,  etc. 

3  Nasse,  in  his  Land  -  community  of  the  Middle  Ages  (Cobden 
Club,  1871),  pp.  15-30,  gives  a  full  account  of  this  village  system  of 
common  holding  in  early  England. 

4  Besides  the  free  township,  there  were,  no  doubt,  from  the  earli¬ 
est  times,  townships  which  had  grown  up  round  the  house  of  a  no¬ 
ble,  or  aetheling,  and  which  were  tenanted  by  his  dependants.  In 
such  cases,  however,  as  yet,  the  village  organization  was  little  af¬ 
fected  by  the  lord’s  neighborhood.  He,  no  doubt,  named  its  reeve ; 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I  77 


For  the  most  part,  each  township  lay,  no  doubt, 
within  the  area  of  older  British  or  Roman  settle¬ 
ments,  but  its  bounds  were  no  longer  marked  by  the 
measurements  and  the  landmarks  of  the  Roman 
surveyor.  As  in  many  of  our  modern  settlements, 
where  population  and  property  have  hardly  come 
into  being,  the  boundary-line  could  only  be  drawn 
from  one  natural  object  to  another.  In  a  country 
where  woodland  was  so  frequent,  the  mark-tree  could 
not  fail  to  be  common,'  and  the  need  of  forming  a 
boundary-line  may  have  combined  with  some  sur¬ 
vival  of  the  older  tree-worship  in  the  dedication  of 
such  objects  to  hero  or  lord.  We  hear  of  Scyld’s 
tree  and  Nicor’s  thorn,  of  Tiw’s  thorn  or  Freya’s 
tree,  as  landmarks  of  districts  or  estates ;  the  special 
god  of  border  and  mark  gave  his  name  to  the  Wo¬ 
den’s  oak  or  the  Woden’s3  stock;  while  sometimes 
what  must  have  been  a  sacred  group  of  trees,  as  in 
the  Kentish  Sevenoaks,  forms  a  starting-point  for 
the  border  lines  of  more  than  one  district.  The 
choice  of  burial-mounds  or  burial-places,  which  was 
almost  as  common,  may  have  been  dictated  by  like 

but  the  reeve  and  the  men  of  the  township  judged  according  to 
custom,  and  distributed  lands  as  in  other  townships  (Stubbs,  Const. 
Hist.  i.  93,  94).  The  land  itself,  however,  was  in  such  a  case  the  lord’s, 
and  not  the  common  freehold  of  the  villagers ;  and  would,  no  doubt, 
be  held  from  the  first  by  them  subject  to  service  on  the  portion  of 
which  the  lord  held  in  his  personal  possession.  In  later  times  the 
dependent  townships  became  an  important  body ;  but  in  the  first 
days  of  the  settlement  they  were  probably  exceptional.  Palgrave, 
however,  regarded  them  as  from  the  first  the  common  form  of  Eng¬ 
lish  holding  (Commonwealth,  i.  65). 

>  The  trees  most  frequently  named  in  these  land-boundaries  are 
the  oak,  ash,  beech,  thorn,  elder,  lime,  and  birch  (Kemble,  Saxons 
in  England,  i.  52,  note). 

3  Kemble,  Cod.  Dip.  pp.  174,  262,  268,  287,436,  496. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

Its  boun¬ 
daries. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


The  free¬ 
man's 
home. 


I78 

mingled  motives  of  convenience  and  religion ;  but, 
for  the  most  part,  the  boundary  track  runs  naturally 
enough  from  one  feature  of  the  landscape  to  another 
— from  the  “  marked  oak,”  along  the  “  marked  eaves,” 
or  edges  of  forest  or  copse,  by  the  “  border  brook,” 
and  over  the  hero’s  “  hlaew,”  or  burial-mound,  to  the 
“gray  stones  ”  that  pointed  back  to  a  primeval  eld.1 

If  we  pass  from  the  township  to  the  homes  within 
its  bounds,  we  see  the  freeman  himself  in  that  outer 
garb  of  peace  and  industry  which  has  been  brought 
down  to  us  by  the  ploughman  and  peasant  of  to-day, 
in  his  smock-frock,  a  coarse  linen  overcoat  that  fell 
to  the  knees,  and  whose  tight  sleeves  and  breast  were 
worked  with  elaborate  embroidery.2  Feet  and  legs 
were  wrapped  in  linen  bands,  cross  -  gartered  and 
party-colored,  as  high  as  the  knees;3  a  hood  shelter¬ 
ed  the  head  in  winter-tide ;  and  among  the  nobles 
or  wealthier  ceorls,  a  short  cloak  of  blue  cloth,  often 
embroidered  with  fanciful  figure-work,  and  fastened 
at  the  shoulder  with  a  costly  buckle,  was  thrown  over 
the  frock  for  warmth  or  ornament.4  The  house  of 


1  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  ii.  52,  note  4. 

3  It  was  only  in  texture  and  color  that  this  dress  differed  in  dif¬ 
ferent  classes  of  society.  It  was  either  of  linen  or  wool  (Baeda, 
Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  19).  The  noble  was  distinguished  from  the  ceorl  by 
his  embroidered  belt  and  golden  sword  -  hilt  (Kemble,  Saxons  in 
England,  ii.  p.  145). 

3  Hosen  were  sometimes  made  of  hide  softened  with  grease  or 
fat  (Baeda,  Vit.  Cuthb.  cap.  18). 

*  The  love  of  bright  and  varied  colors  was  strong  in  both  men 
and  women  ;  in  later  days  monasticism  had  no  harder  battle  to 
fight  than  in  bringing  its  votaries  to  content  themselves  with  the 
undyed  vestments  required  by  its  rule.  (See  Cuthbert’s  struggle  for 
this  at  Lindisfarne ;  Baeda,  Opera  Minora,  Stevenson,  p.  82.)  And 
down  to  the  very  era  of  the  Danish  wars,  saints  and  councils  were 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


179 


such  a  villager  naturally  varied  in  size  and  impor¬ 
tance  with  the  wealth  and  rank  of  its  owner.  Dwell¬ 
ings  were  everywhere  of  wood.* 1 *  Even  in  the  wealth¬ 
ier  Roman  villas  only  the  substructures  seem  to  have 
been  of  stone  or  brick ;  and  the  new  settlers,  accus¬ 
tomed  to  wooden  dwellings  in  their  own  land,  found 
in  Britain  a  wealth  of  forest  and  woodland  which 
supplied  abundant  material  for  construction  near 
every  township.1  The  centre  of  the  homestead  was 
the  hall,  with  the  hearth-fire  in  the  midst  of  it,3  whose 
smoke  made  its  escape  as  best  it  could  through  a 
hole  in  the  roof.  The  hall,  indeed,  was  the  common 
living -place  of  all  the  dwellers  within  the  house. 
Here  the  “board,” set  up  on  trestles  when  needed, 
furnished  a  rough  table  for  the  family  meal ;  and 
when  the  board  was  cleared  away,  the  women  bore 1 * 
the  wooden  beer-cups  or  drinking-horns  to  the  house¬ 
master  and  his  friends  as  they  sat  on  the  settles  or 
benches  ranged  round  the  walls,6  while  the  gleeman 
sang  his  song,0  or  the  harp  was  passed  around  from 


busy  in  denouncing  the  silken  hoods  and  the  gayly  -  colored  leg- 
bands,  which  broke  even  the  garb  of  the  English  clergy. 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  14;  iii.  16,  17. 

3  As  the  country  cleared,  the  “  silva  infructuosa,”  or  wood  reserved 

on  every  farm  for  building  and  fencing,  became  of  increasing  im¬ 
portance,  as  is  shown  by  the  laws  against  cutting  down  or  burning 
trees,  as  well  as  by  the  inclusion  of  such  woods  in  the  Domesday 
survey.  3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  io. 

4  Baeda,  Vit.  Cuthb.  cap.  29 ;  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  4. 

3  For  washing  of  guests’  hands  and  feet,  see  Baeda,  Vit.  Cuthb. 

cap.  29.  For  the  banquet  and  drinking-bouts,  Eddi,  Life  of  Wilfred, 

cap.  16:  “convivium  trium  dierum  et  noctium.” 

6  For  gleemen  and  buffoons,  Beowulf,  v.  2134  et  seq.  A  council 
at  Gloucester  in  747  classes  among  “ludicrarum  artium  ”  those  of 
“  potarum,  citharistarum,  musicorum,  scurrorum.”  Haddan  and 
Stubbs,  Councils,  iii.  369. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

The  farm. 


!8o  the  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

hand  to  hand.1  Here,  too,  when  night  came  and  the 
fire  died  down,  was  the  common  sleeping-place,  and 
men  lay  down  to  rest  on  the  bundles  of  straw  which 
they  had  strewn  about  its  floor.2 

Beside  the  hall  stood  chambers  for  women  and  the 
household,  while  around  the  farm-yard  were  stable 
and  threshing-floor  and  barn.  With  so  thin  and 
scattered  a  population,  and  at  a  time  when  even  in¬ 
ternal  trade  had  hardly  begun  to  exist,  the  homestead 
had  to  be  in  the  main  its  own  provider;  the  grain 
had  not  only  to  be  sown  and  reaped,  but  to  be  made 
into  bread  in  the  household,  as  the  flax  was  not  only 
gathered,  but  w’oven  into  garments.  To  woman  fell 
much  of  the  outer,  and  almost  all  this  inner,  farm- 
work.  It  was  she  who  milked  the  kine  and  shore 
the  sheep,  w’ho  made  the  cheese  and  combed  the 
wool  and  beat  the  flax ;  while  her  name  of  the 
“  spinster  ”  still  reminds  us  how  she  spun  the  thread 
and  wove  the  wool  of  every  garment.3  The  build¬ 
ings  in  which  this  work  went  on  lay  round  each 
larger  homestead — the  mill  for  grinding  the  “  grits  ” 
or  rough  corn  and  the  finer  wheat-meal  ;4 5 6  the  oven 
where  the  loaf  was  baked,  common  loaf  or  alms  loaf, 
or  white  bread  of  pure  wheat,  or  raised  loaf  and 
cake;3  the  sheds  for  storing  wool  and  honey  and  wax;' 

1  See  Caedmon’s  story,  posted.  Dunstan  in  later  days  carries  his 

harp  in  his  hand  on  visits,  and  loves  “  carmina  gentilitatis  ”  and 
“naenia.” 

3  Beowulf,  w.  1381-1385. 

3  Among  the  poetic  names  for  woman  was  “  freodowebbe,”  the 
"weaver  of  peace,”  which  reminds  us  of  her  subtler  influence  as 
reconciler  in  the  home  (Beowulf,  v.  3880). 

4  Cod.  Dip.  pp.  166,  226. 

5  Cod.  Dip.  pp.  226,  235. 

6  Cod.  Dip.  pp.  231-235,  288,  313. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  j  g i 

the  malt-house  and  the  brewery,  with  its  bright  ale 
and  mild  ale  and  smooth  ale  and  beer;1  the  dairy 
with  its  butter  and  its  cheese.2  The  outer  work 
of  the  farm  fell  upon  the  freeman  and  his  serfs. 
Oxherd  and  cowherd,  shepherd  and  goatherd,  the 
swineherd  who  drove  the  hogs  into  forest  and  wood¬ 
land  to  feed  on  the  oak-mast,  the  barn-man  and  the 
sower,  were  serfs  in  wealthier  households,  or  pn  the 
estate  of  the  lord  who  had  gathered  a  township 
about  him ;  but  in  the  free  townships  the  poorer 
freeman  must  have  been  his  own  laborer,  and  the 
toil  necessitated  by  the  system  of  common  culture 
was  severe.  The  open  lands  of  the  common  pasture 
were  often  far  from  any  homestead,  so  that  through 
the  long  winter  nights,  from  Martinmas  to  Easter, 
the  villagers  had  to  take  their  turn  in  folding  and 
guarding  the  horses  and  cattle  that  pastured  on 
them.  The  need  of  fencing  off  the  common  meadow 
into  separate  grass  fields  when  the  grass  began  to 
grow  afresh  in  the  spring  was  a  yet  more  serious 
burden ; 3  and  besides  all  these,  the  villager  had  to 
help  in  the  maintenance  of  mound  and  ditch  around 
the  townships,  as  well  as  to  be  ready  when  occasion 


1  We  hear  of  all  of  these  varieties  as  early  as  the  seventh  century, 
as  well  as  of  Welsh  ale  and  sweetened  Welsh  ale  (Cod.  Dip.  pp.  i66, 
1088).  Wine  may  have  been  introduced  by  the  Christian  mission¬ 
aries,  but  it  was  in  use  in  very  early  times  (Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl. 
i.  1). 

2  Cod.  Dip.  pp.  135,  288.  Ine’s  Laws,  sec.  70;  Thorpe’s  Laws  and 
Institutes,  vol.  i.  p.  147. 

3  “  If  ceorls  have  a  common  meadow,  or  other  partible  land,  to 
fence,  and  some  have  fenced  their  part,  some  have  not,  and  strange 
cattle  come  in  and  eat  up  the  common  corn  or  grass,  let  those  go 
who  own  the  gap  and  make  compensation  to  the  others  ”  (Laws  of 
Ine,  iii.42;  Thorpe’s  Laws  and  Institutes,  vol.  i.  p.  129). 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


I  82 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 

The  kin. 


called  to  join  the  hue  and  cry  in  chase  of  stolen  cat¬ 
tle,  or  to  follow  the  reeve  of  his  township  to  hun¬ 
dred-moot  or  folk-moot. 

The  dwellers  in  such  a  township  were  not  men 
who  had  casually  come  together.  As  the  blood-bond 
gave  its  form  to  English  warfare,  so  it  gave  its  form 
to  English  society.  Kinsmen,  as  we  have  seen, 
fought  side  by  side  in  the  hour  of  battle,  and  the 
feelings  of  honor  and  discipline  which  held  the  host 
together  were  drawn  from  the  common  duty  of  every 
man  in  each  little  group  of  warriors  to  his  house. 
And  as  they  fought  side  by  side  on  the  field,  so  they 
dwelt  side  by  side  on  the  soil.  Harling  abode  by 
Harling,  and  Billing  by  Billing,  and  each  “wick”  and 
“  ham  ”  and  “  stead  ”  and  “  tun  ”  took  its  name  from 
the  kinsmen  who  dwelt  together  in  it.  In  this  way, 
the  house  or  ham  of  the  Billings  was  Billingham, 
and  the  tun  or  township  of  the  Harlings  was  Har- 
lington.1  The  life  of  the  individual  freeman,  indeed, 
was  all  but  lost  in  that  of  the  family.3  When  he  was 
a  child,  his  kinsmen  were  bound  by  custom  to  watch 
over  and  guard  him  from  wrong,  even  should  the 

1  Professor  Stubbs  (Const.  Hist.  vol.  i.  p.  92)  says,  “  In  England  it 
is  probable  that  all  the  primitive  villages  in  whose  name  the  patro¬ 
nymic  syllable  “  ing  ”  occurs  were  originally  colonized  by  communi¬ 
ties  united  either  really  by  blood  or  by  the  belief  in  a  common  de¬ 
scent.”  See,  too,  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  vol.  i.  p.  234,  etc. ;  and 
Robertson,  Scotland  under  Early  Kings,  vol.  ii.  App.  F,  “  The  Kin.” 
The  settlement  of  these  groups  of  kinsmen  was  probably  determined 
by  lot.  When  Cuthbert’s  relics  found  a  home  at  Durham,  the  wood¬ 
land  around  was  parted  in  this  way  among  the  new  settlers.  See 
Sim.  Dur.  Hist.  Dunelm.  Eccl.  sec.  37  :  “  Eradicata  undique  silva  et 
unicuique  mansionibus  sorte  distributis.”  Larger  divisions  of  coun¬ 
try,  such  as  the  Rapes  of  Sussex,  bear  traces  of  the  same  mode  of 
distribution. 

2  Essays  in  Anglo-Saxon  Law  (Boston,  1871),  p.  121  et  seq. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


183 

wrong  be  at  his  father’s  hand.  When  he  wedded,  it  chap. IV- 
was  among  the  kinsfolk  that  he  had  to  find  him  Thesettie- 
sureties  and  witnesses.  If  a  blood-feud  sprang  up,  thencon- 
the  kin  were  bound  to  give  life  and  limb  in  his  de-  queror8- 
fence.  Should  he  be  slain,  it  was  for  them  to  avenge 
his  slaying.  Order  and  law  itself  rested  not  on  a 
man’s  personal  action,  but  on  the  blood-bond  that 
knit  him  to  his  kin.  Every  outrage  was  held  to  have 
been  done  by  all  who  were  linked  in  blood  to  the 
doer  of  it ;  every  crime  to  have  been  done  against 
all  who  were  linked  in  blood  to  the  sufferer  from  it. 

From  this  sense  of  the  value  of  the  family  bond  as  a 
means  of  restraining  the  wrong-doer  by  forces  which 
the  tribe  as  a  whole  did  not  as  yet  possess  sprang 
the  first  rude  forms  of  English  justice.  The  free¬ 
man’s  life  and  the  freeman’s  limb  had  each  its  legal 
price.1  “  Eye  for  eye,”  and  “  limb  for  limb,”  ran  the 
rough  customary  code,  or  for  each  fair  damages. 

This  price  of  life  or  limb,  however,  was  paid  not  by 
the  wrong-doer  to  the  man  he  wronged,  but  by  the 
kin  or  family  of  the  wrong-doer  to  the  kin  or  family 
of  the  wronged.  The  loss,  and  so  the  right  to  re¬ 
venge,  or  to  the  “  blood-wite  ”  by  which  that  right 
could  be  bought  off,  were  the  loss  and  the  right  not 
of  the  individual  freeman,  but  of  his  kin.  Each  kins¬ 
man  was  his  kinsman’s  keeper,  bound  to  protect  him 
from  wrong,  to  hinder  him  from  wrong-doing,  and  to 
suffer  with  him  and  pay  for  him  if  wrong  were  done. 

So  fully  was  this  principle  recognized  that  even  if 
any  man  was  charged  before  his  fellow- tribesmen 

1  The  Laws  of  Althelberht,  the  first  English  writing -down  of 
customary  law,  are  little  more  than  a  list  of  the  fines  due  for  harm 
to  life  and  limb. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


184 

chap^iv.  with  crime,  his  kinsfolk  still  remained,  in  fact,  his  sole 
The setue- judges;  for  it  was  by  their  solemn  oath  of  his  inno- 
tue  con-  cence  or  his  guilt  that  he  had  to  stand  or  fall, 
querors.  The  tie  of  blood,  however,  was  widened  by  the 
The  land,  larger  tie  of  land.  Land  with  the  German  race 
seems  at  a  very  early  time  to  have  become  every¬ 
where  the  accompaniment  of  full  freedom.'  The 
freeman  was  strictly  the  freeholder,  and  the  exercise 
of  his  full  rights  as  a  free  member  of  the  communi¬ 
ty  to  which  he  belonged  became  inseparable  from 
the  possession  of  his  “  holding  ”  in  it.  But  property 
had  not  as  yet  reached  the  stage  of  absolutely  per¬ 
sonal  possession.  The  woodland  and  pasture-land 
of  an  English  village  were  still  undivided,  and  every 
free  villager  had  the  right  of  turning  into  it  his  cat¬ 
tle  or  swine.  The  meadow-land  lay,  in  like  manner, 
open  and  undivided  from  hay-harvest  to  spring.  It 
was  only  when  grass  began  to  grow  afresh  that  the 
common  meadow  was  fenced  off  into  grass-fields, 
one  for  each  household  in  the  village ;  and  when 
hay-harvest  was  over,  fence  and  division  were  at  an 
end  again.  The  ploughland  alone  was  permanent¬ 
ly  allotted  in  equal  shares  both  of  corn-land  and  fal¬ 
low-land  to  the  families  of  the  freemen,  though  even 
the  ploughland  was  subject  to  fresh  division  as  the 
number  of  claimants  grew  greater  or  less.2 


1  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  84,  199. 

5  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  56,  57 ;  and  see  Nasse,  Land-community  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  pp.  15-30.  Traces  of  this  common  culture  lasted 
here  and  there  to  very  recent  times.  Some  thirty  years  ago,  on  the 
Yorkshire  wolds,  “each  farmer  owned  a  certain  number  of  ‘ox- 
gangs  ’  (a  word  still  to  be  heard  now  and  then  from  the  mouths  of 
old  laborers),  and  lines  of  ancient  balks  and  ploughlands,  some 
straight,  some  curiously  curved,  still  exist  in  places.  The  common 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


185 

It  was  this  sharing  in  the  common  land  which  chap.iv. 
marked  off  the  freeman,  or  ceorl,  from  the  unfree  The  settie- 
man,  or  laet,  the  tiller  of  land  which  another  owned.  th^con- 
As  the  ceorl  was  the  descendant  of  settlers  who,  queror8- 
whether  from  their  earlier  arrival  or  from  kinship  Theun- 
with  the  original  settlers  of  the  village,  had  been  ad¬ 
mitted  to  a  share  in  its  land  and  its  corporate  life,  so 
the  laet  was  a  descendant  of  later  comers  to  whom 
such  a  share  was  denied,  or  in  some  cases  perhaps 
of  earlier  dwellers  from  whom  the  land  had  been 
wrested  by  force  of  arms.  In  the  modern  sense  of 
freedom,  the  laet  was  free  enough.  He  had  house 
and  home  of  his  own,  his  life  and  limb  were  as  se¬ 
cure  as  the  ceorl’s — save  as  against  his  lord ;  it  is 
probable,  from  what  we  see  in  later  laws,  that  as  time 
went  on  he  was  recognized  as  a  member  of  the  na¬ 
tion,  summoned  to  the  folk-moot,  allowed  equal  right 
at  law,  and  called  like  the  full  freeman  to  the  host¬ 
ing.  But  he  was  unfree  as  regards  lord  and  land. 

He  had  neither  part  nor  lot  in  the  common  land  of 
the  village.  The  ground  which  he  tilled  he  held 
of  some  freeman  of  the  tribe  to  whom  he  paid  rent 
in  labor  or  in  kind.  And  this  man  was  his  lord. 
Whatever  rights  the  unfree  villager  might  gain  in 
the  general  social  life  of  his  fellow-countrymen,  he 


pasture  or  meadow  was  divided  into  portions,  each  of  which  changed 
hands  annually,  and  each  had  cut  on  the  turf  a  distinguishing  mark 
— as  an  arrow,  a  triangle,  or  a  circle.  At  the  harvest  feast  a  num¬ 
ber  of  apples,  each  marked  in  a  corresponding  fashion  to  one  of  the 
‘  daels,’  or  divisions,  were  thrown  into  a  tub  of  water.  Each  farmer 
then  dived  for  an  apple,  and  the  mark  which  it  carried  indicated 
the  ‘  dsel  ’  which  was  to  be  his  for  the  coming  year.  The  Dolemoors 
in  Somersetshire  were  managed  in  a  similar  way,  save  that  the 
change  was  for  a  longer  period  ”  (Murray's  Yorkshire,  p.  161). 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


The  slave. 


!86  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

had  no  rights  as  against  his  lord.  He  could  leave 
neither  land  nor  lord  at  his  will.  He  was  bound  to 
render  due  service  to  his  lord  in  tillage  or  in  fight. 
So  long,  however,  as  these  services  were  done,  the 
land  was  his  own.  His  lord  could  not  take  it  from 
him ;  and  he  was  bound  to  give  him  aid  and  protec¬ 
tion  in  exchange  for  his  services.1 

Far  different  from  the  position  of  the  laet  was  that 
of  the  slave,  though  there  is  no  ground  for  believing 
that  the  slave  class  was  other  than  a  small  one.  It 
was  a  class  which  sprang  mainly  from  debt  or  crime. 
Famine  drove  men  to  “  bend  their  heads  in  the  evil 
days  for  meat the  debtor,  unable  to  discharge  his 
debt,  flung  on  the  ground  his  freeman’s  sword  and 
spear,  took  up  the  laborer’s  mattock,  and  placed  his 
head  as  a  slave  within  a  master’s  hands.  The  crim¬ 
inal  whose  kinsfolk  would  not  make  up  his  fine  be¬ 
came  a  crime  serf  of  the  plaintiff  or  the  king. 
Sometimes  a  father  pressed  by  need  sold  children 
and  wife  into  bondage.  In  any  case,  the  slave  be¬ 
came  part  of  the  livestock  of  his  master’s  estate,  to 
be  willed  away  at  death  with  horse  or  ox,  whose  ped¬ 
igree  was  kept  as  carefully  as  his  own.  His  chil¬ 
dren  were  bondsmen  like  himself ;  even  a  freeman’s 
children  by  a  slave  mother  inherited  the  mother’s 
taint.  “  Mine  is  the  calf  that  is  born  of  my  cow,”  ran 
an  English  proverb.  It  was  not,  indeed,  slavery  such 
as  we  have  known  in  modern  times,  for  stripes  and 
bonds  were  rare :  if  the  slave  was  slain,  it  was  by  an 
angry  blow,  not  by  the  lash.  But  his  master  could 
slay  him  if  he  would ;  it  was  but  a  chattel  the  less. 


1  For  laet,  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  25,  52,  73,  and  note. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


I87 

The  slave  had  no  place  in  the  justice-court,  no  kins-  chap.  iv. 
men  to  claim  vengeance  or  guilt-fine  for  his  wrong.  The  settie- 
If  a  stranger  slew  him,  his  lord  claimed  the  damages ;  thenconf 
if  guilty  of  wrong-doing,  “  his  skin  paid  for  him  ”  un-  (*aerora- 
der  his  master’s  lash.  If  he  fled,  he  might  be  chased 
like  a  strayed  beast,  and  when  caught  he  might  be 
flogged  to  death.  If  the  wrong-doer  were  a  woman, 
she  might  be  burned.1 

With  the  public  life  of  the  village,  however,  the  Thnet‘“tn' 
slave  had  nothing,  the  last  in  early  days  little,  to  do. 

In  its  moot,  the  common  meeting  of  its  villagers  for 
justice  and  government,  a  slave  had  no  place  or  voice, 
while  the  laet  was  originally  represented  by  the  lord 
whose  land  he  tilled.  The  life,  the  sovereignty,  of 
the  settlement  was  solely  in  the  body  of  the  freemen 
whose  holdings  lay  round  the  moot-hill  or  the  sacred 
tree  where  the  community  met  from  time  to  time  to 
order  its  own  industry  '  and  to  make  its  own  laws. 

Here  new  settlers  were  admitted  to  the  freedom  of 


1  For  the  slave,  see  Stubbs.  Const.  Hist.  i.  89;  Kemble,  Saxons  in 
England,  i.  185,  etc. 

s  There  is  no  ground  for  believing  that  the  “  tun-moot  ”  was  a 
judicial  court.  Its  work  was  the  ordering  of  the  village  life  and 
the  village  industry ;  and  traces  of  this  still  survive  in  our  institu¬ 
tions.  “  The  right  of  the  markmen  to  determine  whether  a  new 
settler  should  be  admitted  to  the  township  exists  in  the  form  of 
admitting  a  tenant  at  the  court  baron  and  customary  court  of  every 
manor ;  the  right  of  the  markmen  to  determine  the  ‘  bye-laws,’  the 
local  arrangement  for  the  common  husbandry,  or  the  fencing  of  the 
hay-fields,  or  the  proportion  of  cattle  to  be  turned  into  the  common 
pasture,  exists  still  in  the  manorial  courts  and  in  the  meetings  of 
the  townships ;  the  very  customs  of  relief  and  surrender,  which  are 
often  regarded  as  distinctly  feudal,  are  remnants  of  the  polity  of  the 
time  when  every  transfer  of  property  required  the  witness  of  the 
community  to  whose  membership  the  new  tenant  was  thereby  ad¬ 
mitted  ”  (Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  i.  95,  96). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  IV. 

The  Settle¬ 
ment  of 
the  Con¬ 
querors. 


1 88 

the  township,  and  by-laws  framed  and  headman  and 
tithing-man  chosen  for  its  governance.  Here  plough¬ 
land  and  meadow-land  were  shared  in  due  lot  among: 
the  villagers,  and  field  and  homestead  passed  from 
man  to  man  by  the  delivery  of  a  turf  cut  from  its 
soil.  Here  strife  of  farmer  with  farmer  was  settled 
according  to  the  “customs”  of  the  township  as  its 
elder  men  stated  them,  and  four  men  were  chosen 
to  follow  headman  or  ealdorman  to  hundred-court  or 
war.  It  is  with  a  reverence  such  as  is  stirred  by  the 
sight  of  the  head-waters  of  some  mighty  river  that 
one  looks  back  to  these  village-moots  of  Friesland 
or  Sleswick.  It  was  here  that  England  learned  to 
be  a  “  mother  of  parliaments.”  It  was  in  these  tiny 
knots  of  husbandmen  that  the  men  from  whom  Eng¬ 
lishmen  were  to  spring  learned  the  worth  of  public 
opinion,  of  public  discussion,  the  worth  of  the  agree¬ 
ment,  the  “  common  sense,”  the  general  conviction 
to  which  discussion  leads,  as  of  the  laws  which  de¬ 
rive  their  force  from  being  expressions  of  that  gen¬ 
eral  conviction.  A  humorist  of  our  own  day  has 
laughed  at  parliaments  as  “  talking-shops,”  and  the 
laugh  has  been  echoed  by  some  who  have  taken  hu¬ 
mor  for  argument.  But  talk  is  persuasion,  and  per¬ 
suasion  is  force,  the  one  force  which  can  sway  free¬ 
men  to  deeds  such  as  those  which  have  made  Eng¬ 
land  what  she  is.  The  “  talk  ”  of  the  village  moot, 
the  strife  and  judgment  of  men  giving  freely  their 
own  rede  and  setting  it  as  freely  aside  for  what  they 
learn  to  be  the  wiser  rede  of  other  men,  is  the 
groundwork  of  English  history. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


189 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  STRIFE  OF  THE  CONQUERORS. 

577-617. 

Important  as  was  the  battle  of  Deorham  in  mark- 
ing  the  point  of  transition  between  the  earlier  age  of  om. 
conquest  and  the  age  of  settlement  which  followed 
it,  it  is  of  hardly  less  importance  as  marking  a  new 
point  of  departure  in  the  political  relations  of  the 
conquerors  themselves.  Nothing  can  be  more  re¬ 
markable  than  the  change  which  from  this  moment 
passes  over  their  relations  to  the  conquered  people. 

Till  now,  as  we  have  seen,  the  war  between  English¬ 
men  and  Welshmen  had  been  a  war  of  extermina¬ 
tion.  Eastward  of  the  line  which  the  English  sword 
had  drawn  across  the  island,  no  trace  was  left  of  Ro¬ 
man  or  of  British  life ;  and  westward  of  it,  in  the 
half  of  Britain  that  still  remained  unconquered,  there 
was  no  thought  of  submission  to  or  intercourse  with 
the  conquerors.  The  force  of  the  Roman  past  was 
seen  in  the  attitude  which  the  Britons  preserved 
towards  their  English  assailants.  In  our  anxiety  to 
know  more  of  our  fathers,  we  listen  to  the  monoto¬ 
nous  plaint  of  Gildas  with  a  strange  disappointment. 
Gildas  must  have  witnessed  much  of  the  invasion  ;* 
but  we  look  in  vain  through  his  book  for  any  ac- 

1  His  work  dates  from  about  560,  but  he  had  quitted  Britain  some 
thirty  years  before. 


190 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con 
querors. 

577-617. 


Beino. 


count  of  the  life  or  settlement  of  Saxon  or  Engle  or 
Jute.  He  tells  us  nothing  of  their  fortunes  or  of  their 
leaders.  A  new  people  was  growing  up  in  the  con¬ 
quered  half  of  Britain,  but  across  the  border  of  this 
new  people  Gildas  gives  us  but  a  glimpse — doubt¬ 
less  he  had  but  a  glimpse  himself — of  forsaken  walls, 
of  shrines  polluted  with  heathen  impiety.  His  si¬ 
lence  and  ignorance  mark  the  character  which  the 
struggle  preserved  up  to  the  close  of  the  sixth  cen¬ 
tury.  The  Briton  had  been  driven  by  the  sword 
from  much  of  British  soil.  But,  beaten  as  he  was, 
he  yet  remained  unconquered.  No  British  neck 
had  as  yet  bowed  in  willing  slavery  before  the  Eng¬ 
lish  invader ;  and  the  provincials  still  looked  down 
on  their  assailants  with  the  scorn  with  which  Rome 
had  looked  down  on  them  in  the  very  height  of  its 
power.  They  still  held  the  struggle  to  be  one  of 
civilization  against  barbarism.  To  the  Britons  the 
English  invaders  remained  “  barbarians,”  “  wolves,” 
“  dogs,”  “  whelps  from  the  kennel  of  barbarism,” 
“  hateful  to  God  and  to  man.”1  Their  victories  were 
accepted  as  triumphs  of  the  power  of  evil,  as  chas¬ 
tisements  of  a  divine  justice  for  national  sin.  But 
their  ravage,  terrible  as  it  was,  was  held  to  be  almost 
at  an  end;  in  another  century,  so  ran  Welsh  proph¬ 
ecies,  their  last  hold  on  the  land  would  be  shaken 
off. 

Legend,  if  it  distorts  facts,  preserves  accurately 
enough  the  impressions  of  a  vanished  time;  and  in 
the  legend  of  St.  Beino  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 

1  Gildas,  Hist.  23:  “  Ferocissimi  illi  nefandi  nominis  Saxones,  Deo 
hominibusque  invisi,  quasi  in  caulas  lupi  .  .  .  grex  catulorum  de  cu- 
bili  leaenae  barbariae  .  .  .  canum  catastam.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


r 


I9I 

chasm  that  parted  the  two  races  at  this  period.  Beino  chap.  v. 
had  settled  with  some  monkish  followers  in  a  solitary  The  strife 
retreat  in  the  west  of  our  Herefordshire.  “And  on °fqueror°n" 
a  certain  day,  as  Beino  was  travelling  near  the  river  577^r17 
Severn,  where  was  a  ford,  lo !  he  heard  a  voice  on  — 
the  other  side  of  the  river,  inciting  dogs  to  hunt  a 
hare ;  the  voice  being  that  of  a  Saxon,  who  spoke 
as  loud  as  he  could  ‘  Cirgia  ’  (charge),  which  in  that 
language  incited  the  dogs.  And  when  Beino  heard 
the  voice  of  the  Saxon,  he  immediately  returned, 
and,  coming  to  his  disciples,  said  to  them,  ‘  My  sons, 
put  on  your  clothes  and  your  shoes,  and  let  us  leave 
this  place,  for  the  nation  of  this  man  has  a  strange 
language,  and  is  abominable,  and  I  heard  his  voice 
on  the  other  side  of  the  river  inciting  the  dogs  after 
a  hare.  They  have  invaded  this  place  and  it  will  be 
theirs,  and  they  will  keep  it  in  their  possession.’  And 
then  Beino  said  to  one  of  his  disciples,  Bithylint  was 
his  name — ‘  My  son,’  said  he,  ‘  be  obedient  to  me  ;  I 
wish  that  thou  wilt  remain  here.  My  blessing  shall 
be  with  thee.  And  the  cross  which  I  have  made  I 
will  leave  with  thee.’  And  the  blessing  of  Beino 
bound  that  disciple,  and  he  remained  there.  And 
Beino  and  his  disciples  came  as  far  as  Meivon,  and 
there  he  remained  with  Tysilio  forty  days  and  forty 
nights.  And  from  thence  he  came  to  King  Cynan, 
son  of  Brochwel,  and  he  requested  a  place  to  pray 
for  his  soul,  and  that  of  his  friends.  And  the  king 
gave  to  him  Gwydelwerum,  in  Merionethshire.” 1 


1  Lives  of  Cambro-British  Saints,  by  Rev.  W.  J.  Rees,  p.  301.  The 
Welsh  text  is  given  at  p.  15.  Like  most  of  the  Welsh  hagiographies, 
Beino’s  Life,  in  its  present  form,  is  of  the  twelfth  century ;  but,  like 
its  fellows,  it  is  clearly  founded  on  old  materials. 


192 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


% 


chap.  v.  But  with  the  battle  of  Deorham  this  absolute  sev- 
The  strife  erance  between  the  one  race  and  the  other  comes  al- 
ofqueror°sn  most  suddenly  to  an  end.  In  a  few  years  we  find 
57TTS17  the  Welshmen  of  the  west  in  alliance  with,  and  even 
„  —  fisfhtinor  by  the  side  of,  their  assailants  of  the  east.  It 

End  of  €x~  ^  ^ 

termina-  is  possible  that  its  British  inhabitants  had  never  been 
Britom.  driven  from  the  soil  which  Ceawlin  won  in  the  lower 
Severn  valley ;  it  was,  at  any  rate,  but  a  short  while 
after  their  settlement  that  the  West- Saxon  settlers 
in  this  district  were  leagued  with  the  Welsh  for  the 
overthrow  of  Ceawlin.  Such  a  league  took  a  yet 
more  marked  form  when  Penda  and  the  Englishmen 
of  Mid-Britain  marched  side  by  side  with  Welshmen 
in  their  attack  on  Northumbria.  Junctions  such  as 
these  show  that  the  older  wars  of  extermination  had 
come  to  an  end,  and  that  the  hostility  of  the  two 
races  was  henceforth  to  sink  down  into  the  common 
hostility  of  neighboring  peoples.  But  we  have  more 
direct  proof  that  the  Britons  wrere  no  longer  driven 
from  the  soil  by  their  assailants  in  the  conquests 
which  the  Northumbrian  King  /Ethelfrith  was  soon 
to  win  from  the  Britons  of  Strathclyde.  “He  wasted 
the  race  of  the  Britons  more  than  any  chieftain  of  the 
English  had  done,”  says  Baeda,  “  for  none  drove  out 
or  subdued  so  many  of  the  natives  or  won  so  much 
of  their  land  for  English  settlement,  or  made  so  many 
tributary  to  Englishmen.” 1  The  policy  of  accepting 
the  submission  and  tribute  of  the  Welsh,  but  of  leav¬ 
ing  them  on  the  conquered  soil,  became,  indeed, 
from  this  moment  the  invariable  policy  of  the  in¬ 
vaders  ;  and  as  the  invasion  pushed  further  and  fur- 


1  Baeda.  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  34. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


1 93 


ther  to  the  west,  an  ever-growing  proportion  of  the  CHAP-  *T. 
Britons  remained  mingled  with  the  conquerors.  We  The  strife 
see  this  strongly  brought  out  in  one  of  these  west- °fqtu^r0Cr°s“‘ 
ern  districts.  By  a  long  series  of  victories,  a  series  57 
spreading  over  the  space  of  a  hundred  and  thirty 
years,  the  West  Saxons  at  last  became  masters  of 
the  country  which  now  bears  the  name  of  Somerset, 
the  land  of  the  Somer-saetas.  Each  successive  wave 
of  invasion  has  left  its  mark  in  the  local  names  of 
the  district  over  which  it  passed ;  and  the  varying 
proportion  of  these  to  the  Celtic  or  other  non-Eng¬ 
lish  names  around  them  throws  some  light  on  the 
varying  character  of  the  conquest.  We  may  take 
as  a  rough  index  the  well-known  English  termina¬ 
tion  “  ton.”  North  of  Mendip,  in  the  country  which 
had  been  won  in  the  early  days  of  West-Saxon  in¬ 
vasion,  this  bears  to  all  other  names  the  proportion 
of  about  a  third.  Between  Mendip  and  the  Parret, 
in  the  conquests  of  Centwine,  it  reaches  only  a  fourth. 

Across  the  Parret,  but  east  of  the  road  from  Watch- 
et  to  Wellington,  the  proportion  decreases  to  a  fifth; 
and  westward  of  this  it  becomes  rapidly  rarer,  and 
varies  in  different  districts  from  an  eighth  to  a 
tenth.  In  other  words,  the  British  population,  which 
had  withdrawn  before  the  sword  of  Ceawlin,  rested 
in  quiet  subjection  beneath  the  sword  of  Ine.  The 
change  is  yet  more  strongly  marked  by  Ine’s  laws. 

In  these  the  Briton  is  recognized  as  a  subject  of  the 
State  and  as  entitled  to  claim  legal  protection  for 
life  and  limb. 

But  the  battle  of  Deorham  marks  more  than  a  change  in 

.  .  ,  .  r  .  .  ,  relations 

change  in  the  relation  of  the  conquered  to  the  con  -of  conquer- 
querors.  It  marks  a  change  in  the  relations  of  the  0,J' 

13 


194 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  conquerors  themselves.  From  this  moment  the  strife 
The  strife  of  Englishman  and  Briton,  though  far  from  having 
querors.  reached  its  close,  sinks  into  comparative  ummpor- 
577-617  tance ;  and  what  plays  the  first  part  in  English  poli- 
—  tics  for  the  next  two  hundred  years  is  the  strife  of 
Englishman  with  Englishman.  However  wearisome 
such  a  strife  may  seem,  it  was  of  vital  import  to  the 
after-history  of  the  country,  for  it  was  only  by  hard 
fighting  that  the  relative  weight  of  the  conquering 
peoples  could  be  determined,  and  a  centre  of  su¬ 
premacy  established  round  which  the  various  tribes 
that  had  shared  in  the  winning  of  Britain  could 
gather  into  a  nation.  Till  now  no  national  idea  had 
shown  itself  in  the  new  England.  All  the  kingdoms 
which  had  been  built  up  by  the  invaders  stood  on  a 
footing  of  equality.  All  had  taken  an  independent 
share  in  the  work  of  conquest.  Although  the  one¬ 
ness  of  a  common  blood  and  a  common  speech  was 
everywhere  recognized,  we  find  no  traces  of  any 
common  action  or  common  rule.  Even  in  the  two 
groups  of  kingdoms,  the  Engle  and  the  Saxon  king¬ 
doms  which  occupied  Britain  south  of  the  Humber, 
the  relations  of  each  member  of  the  group  to  its 
fellow -members  seem  to  have  been  merely  local; 
it  was  only  locally  that  East  and  West  and  South 
English  were  being  grouped  at  this  time  round  the 
Middle  English  of  Leicester,  or  that  the  East  and 
West  and  South  Saxons  had  been  grouped  round  the 
Middle  Saxons  about  London.  In  neither  instance 
do  we  find  any  real  trace  of  a  confederacy,  or  of  the 
rule  of  one  member  of  the  group  over  the  others ; 
while  north  of  the  Humber  the  feeling  between  the 
Engle  of  Yorkshire  and  the  Engle  who  had  settled 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


195 


towards  the  Firth  of  Forth  was  a  feeling  of  hostility  chap.  v. 
rather  than  friendship.  But  with  the  conquests  of  The  strife 
Ceawlin  this  age  of  isolation,  of  equality,  of  indepen-  °queror°n 
dence,  came  to  an  end.  The  progress  of  the  conquest  5r^17 
had,  in  fact,  drawn  a  sharp  line  between  the  kingdoms 
of  the  conquerors.  The  work  of  half  of  them  was 
done.  In  the  south  of  the  island,  not  only  Kent,  but 
Sussex,  Essex,  and  Middlesex  were  surrounded  by 
English  territory,  and  hindered  by  that  single  fact 
from  all  further  growth.  In  Central  Britain  the 
same  fate  necessarily  befell  the  East  English,  the 
South  English,  and  the  Middle  English.  The  West 
Saxons,  on  the  other  hand,  and  the  West  English, 
or  Mercians,  still  remained  free  to  conquer  and  ex¬ 
pand  on  the  south  of  the  Humber,  as  the  English¬ 
men  of  Deira  and  Bernicia  remained  free  to  the 
north  of  that  river.  It  was  plain,  therefore,  that 
from  this  moment  the  growth  and  strength  of  these 
powers  would  throw  their  fellow-kingdoms  into  the 
background,  and  that  with  an  ever-growing  inequality 
of  power  must  come  a  new  arrangement  of  political 
forces.  The  greater  kingdoms  would  in  the  end  be 
drawn  to  subject  and  absorb  the  lesser  ones,  and  to 
the  war  between  Englishman  and  Briton  would  be 
added  a  struggle  between  Englishman  and  English¬ 
man. 

It  was  through  this  struggle,  and  the  establish-  rh‘  m'st' 

00  7  Saxon 

ment  of  a  lordship  on  the  part  of  the  stronger  and  state. 
growing  states  over  their  weaker  and  stationary  fel¬ 
lows  in  which  it  resulted,  that  the  English  kingdoms 
were  to  make  their  first  step  towards  union  in  a  sin¬ 
gle  England ;  and  from  the  time  we  have  reached 
the  struggle  became  inevitable.  Masters  of  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


196 

larger  and  richer  portion  of  the  land,  the  invaders 
were  no  longer  drawn  irresistibly  westward  by  the 
hope  of  plunder,  while  the  severance  of  the  British 
kingdoms  lightened  the  pressure  of  a  common  dan¬ 
ger  from  without.  Greed  and  terror  alike  ceased  to 
hold  the  invaders  together,  and  Saxon  and  Engle 
turned  from  the  work  of  conquest  to  fight  for  lord- 
ship  over  the  land  they  had  won.  At  the  moment 
of  Ceawlin’s  victory,  such  a  lordship  seemed  to  fall 
necessarily  to  the  lot  of  Wessex.  No  king  could 
vie  as  a  conqueror  with  the  king  who  had  fought 
and  won  at  Barbury  Hill,  at  Wimbledon,  and  at 
Deorham.1  None  of  its  fellow- kingdoms  seemed 
likely  to  hold  their  own  against  a  state  that  stretched 
from  the  Channel  to  the  Ouse,  and  from  the  Chil- 
terns  to  the  mouth  of  the  Severn.  Only  one  suc¬ 
cess  more,  in  fact,  was  needed  to  raise  such  a  power 
into  supremacy  over  the  whole  English  people.  A 
march  on  the  upper  Severn  valley  and  the  winning 
of  Chester  would  utterly  crush  the  resistance  of  the 
Britons  ;  for  it  would  cut  off  the  Cumbrians  from 
the  central  districts  of  our  Wales,  as  Deorham  had 
already  cut  off  the  Welsh  of  Somerset,  Devon,  and 
Cornwall,  and  thus  break  what  had  been  Britain 
into  three  isolated  districts  which  could  oppose  no 
common  or  national  resistance  to  their  assailants. 


1  At  Barbury  Hill,  Ceawlin  had  shared  the  victor)'  with  Cynric 
(E.  Chron.  a.  556).  The  victor)'  at  Bedford  had  been  won  by  his 
brother  Cuthwulf.  It  is  this  commanding  position  of  Ceawlin  that 
Baeda  marks  in  setting  him  in  the  list  of  those  who  exercised  an 
“  imperium  ”  over  other  Englishmen — Hilla  of  the  South  Saxons, 
Ceawlin,  yEthelberht  of  Kent,  Raedwald  of  East  Anglia,  and  the 
Northumbrian  kings  Eadwine,  Oswald,  and  Osvviu  ( Baeda,  Hist. 
Eccl.  ii.  5).  But  see  posted,  p.  298,  note. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Uriconi¬ 

um. 


I98 

But  the  result  of  such  a  conquest  would  be  almost 
as  decisive  on  the  political  aspect  of  the  new  Eng¬ 
land  itself.  With  a  border  that  stretched  from  the 
Fens  round  to  the  head-waters  of  the  Trent,  the 
pressure  of  the  West  Saxons  on  Central  Britain 
would  have  been  irresistible.  The  scattered  settlers 
who  were  dotted  over  Northamptonshire,  the  in¬ 
vaders  who  were  hardly  camped  along  the  basin  of 
the  Trent,  the  peoples  of  the  eastern  coast  from  the 
Humber  to  the  Thames,  would  have  been  powerless 
to  resist  Ceawlin’s  supremacy,  while  the  strength  of 
the  Deirans  and  of  the  Bernicians  was  being  drained 
at  this  crisis  by  a  long  and  obstinate  war  which  these 
tribes  were  waging  against  one  another  in  the  bor¬ 
der-lands  of  the  Wear.  Neither  to  the  south  nor  to 
the  north  of  the  Humber  was  there  any  state  save 
Kent  that  could  have  withstood  the  West  Saxons; 
and,  alone,  even  Kent  could  not  have  held  its  own. 

We  can  hardly  doubt  that  it  was  the  sense  of 
these  issues  that  drew  Ceawlin  to  push,  in  583,  only 
six  years  after  his  victory  at  Deorham,  up  the  course 
of  the  Severn.  Marching  through  the  forest -belt 
that  stretched  from  Arden  across  the  north  of  our 
Worcestershire,  a  belt  whose  fragments  preserve 
the  name  of  the  forest  of  Wyre,  the  king  reached 
Uriconium,1  a  town  whose  name  we  recognize  in  its 


1  For  a  translation  of  Llywarch  Hen’s  elegy  on  Kyndylan,  a  dis¬ 
cussion  of  its  historical  relation  to  this  inroad,  and  an  identification 
of  its  “  Tren  ”  with  Uriconium,  see  Guest,  “  Conquest  of  Severn  Val¬ 
ley,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  vol.  xix.  pp.  199-21 5.  For  the  ruins  of  Uri¬ 
conium,  see  Wright,  Guide  to  Uriconium,  1859.  On  one  wall  were 
found  two  lines  scrawled  in  the  plaster,  which  would  have  been  in¬ 
valuable  for  a  knowledge  of  Roman  Britain.  Unluckily,  they  were 
destroyed  ;  but  it  is  noteworthy  that  they  were  in  Latin  (ibid.  p.  46). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


199 


district  of  the  “  Wrekin,”  and  whose  ruins  have  been 
recently  brought  to  light.  The  town  was  strongly 
placed  at  the  base  of  the  Wrekin,  not  far  from  the 
bank  of  the  Severn,  and  was  of  great  extent.  Its 
walls  enclosed  a  space  more  than  double  that  of  Ro¬ 
man  London,  while  the  remains  of  its  forum,  its  thea¬ 
tre,  and  its  amphitheatre,  as  well  as  the  broad  streets 
which  contrast  so  strangely  with  the  narrow  alleys 
of  other  British  towns,1  show  its  wealth  and  impor¬ 
tance.  But  with  its  storm  by  the  West  Saxons  the 
very  existence  of  the  city  came  to  an  end.  Its  ruins 
show  that  the  place  was  plundered  and  burned, 
while  the  bones  which  lie  scattered  among  them 
tell  their  tale  of  the  flight  and  massacre  of  its  in¬ 
habitants,  of  women  and  children  hewn  down  in  the 
streets,  and  wretched  fugitives  stifled  in  the  hypo- 
causts  whither  they  had  fled  with  their  little  hoards 
for  shelter.2  A  British  poet,  in  verses  still  left  to  us, 
sings  piteously  the  death-song  of  Uriconium,  “  the 
white  town  in  the  valley,”  the  town  of  white  stones 
gleaming  among  the  green  woodlands.  The  torch 
of  the  foe  had  left  it,  when  he  sang,  a  heap  of  black¬ 
ened  ruins,  where  the  singer  wandered  through  halls 
he  had  known  in  happier  days — the  halls  of  its  chief 
Kyndylan, “  without  fire,  without  light,  without  song;” 
their  stillness  broken  only  by  the  eagle’s  scream — 
the  eagle  “  who  has  swallowed  fresh  drink,  heart’s 
blood  of  Kyndylan  the  fair.” 

But  with  the  fall  of  Uriconium,  the  firing  of  Pen- 
gwyrn,3  in  its  loop  of  the  upper  Severn,  and  the 


1  Wright,  Uriconium,  p.  48. 

2  Wright,  Uriconium,  pp.  40,  41. 

3  Pengvvyrn  occupied  the  site  of  our  Shrewsbury. 


chap.  v. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Defeat  of 
Faddiley. 


200 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

Tbe  Strife 
of  tbe  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


wreck  of  “  Bassa’s  churches,”  perhaps  a  group  of 
small  chapels,  such  as  we  still  find  at  Glendalough, 
and  which  may  have  left  their  name  to  the  little  vil¬ 
lage  of  Baschurch,1  the  success  of  the  West  Saxons 
reached  its  close.  From  this  point  the  aim  of  their 
raid  must  have  been  Chester ;  but  as  Ceawlin  pushed 
from  Uriconium  up  the  Severn  to  the  head-waters 
of  the  Weaver,  he  was  met  at  a  spot  called  Faddi- 
ley,2  on  what  was  possibly  the  border  of  the  city  ter¬ 
ritory,  as  it  is  still  that  of  our  Cheshire,  by  a  British 
force  which  had  gathered  under  Brocmael,  a  chief¬ 
tain  whose  dominion  may  have  roughly  answered  to 
the  later  Powys.3  From  the  “wrath”  with  which 
Ceawlin  fell  back  into  his  own  country,  as  well  as 
the  events  that  followed,  the  battle  must  have  ended 
in  a  terrible  defeat  of  the  Gewissas.  The  blow  proved 
fatal  to  the  power  of  Wessex.  Not  only  was  the 
upper  Severn  valley  lost  as  quickly  as  it  had  been 
won,4  but  the  loss  was  followed  by  a  rising  of  those 
Gewissas — the  Hwiccas,  as  they  were  called — who 


1  See  Llywarch  Hen’s  elegy,  “  Pengwyrn’s  palace :  is  it  not  in 
flames?”  and  for  Bassa,  w.  46-51  (Guest,  Conquest  of  Severn  Val¬ 
ley,  pp.  204-209).  Baschurch  lies  to  the  north  of  Shrewsbury. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  584.  For  the  identity  of  its  “  Fethan-Leag  ”  with 
Faddiley,  see  Guest,  Conquest  of  Severn  Valley,  pp.  196-199.  It  is 
some  three  miles  west  of  Nantwich. 

3  Guest,  Conquest  of  Severn  Valley,  p.  215. 

4  I  am  afraid  I  differ  here  from  Dr.  Guest  and  Mr.  Freeman.  But 
the  point  seems  clear  when  we  compare  the  lower  with  the  upper 
valley  of  the  Severn.  Both  in  later  days  became  Mercian  ground. 
But  the  country  of  the  Hwiccas  retains  to  this  day  its  West-Saxon 
dialect,  while  north  of  the  Forest  of  Wyre  the  tongue  is  Mercian. 
Had  this  upper  district  been  a  West-Saxon  settlement  conquered 
by  Mercians,  I  see  no  reason  why  its  dialect  should  have  differed 
from  that  of  the  West-Saxon  lands  conquered  by  Mercia  on  the 
lower  Severn. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


201 


had  settled  in  the  newly  conquered  country  along 
the  lower  Severn,1  and  who  now  took  for  their  king 
Ceol  or  Ceolric,2  the  son  of  Cutha,  a  brother  of 
Ceawlin,  who  had  fallen  in  the  rout  at  Faddiley.3 

With  the  rising  of  the  Hwiccas  began  a  struggle 
for  the  throne  between  the  lines  of  Cutha  and  Ceaw¬ 
lin,  which  broke  the  strength  of  Wessex  for  more 
than  two  hundred  years.  The  first  encounter,  in¬ 
deed,  between  the  two  houses  showed  how  thorough¬ 
ly  the  kingdom  was  rent  in  twain.  The  revolt  in 
the  Severn  valley  had  thrown  Ceawlin  back  on  the 
older  Wessex;  and  it  is  there  that,  when  Ceolric 
marched  to  attack  him  in  591,  we  find  the  king  en¬ 
camped  at  Wanborough,4 5  on  the  brink  of  the  Wilt¬ 
shire  Downs,  where  their  steep  escarpment  rears  it¬ 
self  above  the  vale  of  White  Horse.  The  height  was, 
no  doubt,  crowned  with  the  mound  or  barrow  from 
which  its  name  is  drawn — the  barrow  of  Woden, 
the  god  from  whom  the  kings  of  Wessex  believed 
their  race  to  spring:  and  its  sacred  character  may 
have  backed  its  advantages  as  a  military  position ; 
for  Wanborough  was  the  key  of  Ceawlin’s  shrunken 
realm.6  So  long  as  he  held  the  post,  the  old  king 

1  I  gather  this  from  the  point  at  which  Ceawlin  takes  post  against 
the  rebels,  as  well  as  from  their  junction  with  “Britons”  against 
him.  See  postea. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  590.  Malmesbury  (Gesta  Regum,  i.  17)  identifies 
its  “  Ceol  ”  with  Ceolric. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  584:  “There  was  Cutha  slain.” 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  591.  Guest  (“Welsh  and  English  in  Somerset,” 
Archaeol.  Journal,  xvi.  106,  107)  fixes  this  “Wodnes  beorge  ”  at 
Wanborough.  Malmesbury  (Gesta  Regum,  i.  17)  attributes  the  ris¬ 
ing  to  the  hatred  felt  towards  Ceawlin  (“quia  enim  in  odium  sui 
quasi  classicum  utrobique  cecinerat  ”),  but  does  not  give  its  causes. 

5  Guest,  “Welsh  and  English  in  Somerset,”  Archaeol.  Journal, 

xvi.  107. 


chap.  v. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 

Battle  of 
Wanbor¬ 
ough. 


202 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  could  communicate  by  Roman  roads  with  Winches- 
The  strife  ter  and  Old  Sarum ;  another  road  ran  by  Silchester 
°querorsn  t°  the  regions  south  of  the  Thames  which  he  had 
577-617  won  at  Wimbledon ;  while  reinforcements  from  the 
—  district  of  the  Four  Towns  could  reach  him  by  the 
Icknield  Way,  which  ran  along  the  edge  of  the 
downs  on  which  he  stood.  It  was  this  that  made  his 
overthrow  a  decisive  one.  After  a  terrible  slaughter, 
the  day  went  against  Ceawlin ; 1  he  was  driven  from 
his  realm,  and  perished  two  years  after,  it  may  be 
in  some  effort  to  regain  his  throne.2  The  battle  of 
Wanborough  marks,  as  we  have  seen,  a  new  stage 
in  the  relations  of  Welshmen  and  Englishmen.  At 
Faddiley  the  Britons  had  reappeared  on  the  scene 
of  our  history  as  a  vigorous  fighting  power.  At 
Wanborough,  it  was  their  junction  with  the  Hwic- 
cas  that  struck  down  Ceawlin,  for  Britons  marched 
side  by  side  with  the  Hwiccas  in  the  host  of  Ceolric.3 
But  the  battle  marks  no  less  a  new  stage  in  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  West  Saxons.  The  House  of  Cutha, 
which  this  alliance  had  seated  on  the  throne,4 5  had  at 
once  to  pay  the  price  of  a  policy  which  had  brought 
the  Welshmen  into  Wessex.  After  a  few  years 
Ceolric  was  succeeded  by  his  brother  Ceolwulf  ;6  but 
the  reign  of  Ceolwulf  was  one  long  fight  with  Eng- 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  591  :  “There  was  great  slaughter  at  Wanborough, 

and  Ceawlin  was  driven  out.”  2  E.  Chron.  a.  593. 

2  Malmesbury  (Gesta  Regum,  1.  17) :  “  Conspirantibus  tarn  Anglis 

quam  Brittonibus  apud  Wodnesdic  cseso  exercitu.” 

4  It  retained  it  till  685,  when  Ceawlin’s  line  again  recovered  the 
kingdom  under  Csedwalla  and  Ine,  and,  after  a  fresh  interruption, 
finally  made  it  its  own  in  Ecgberht. 

5  E.  Chron.  a.  597 :  “  He  fought  and  contended  incessantly  with 

Angel-cyn,  or  with  Walas,  or  with  Peohtas,  or  with  Scottas.”  I 
cannot  explain  the  appearance  here  of  “  Piets  and  Scots.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


203 


lishmen  and  Britons;  and  it  was  while  Wessex  was  chap.  v. 
thus  battling  for  very  life  that  the  primacy  among  The  strife 
the  conquerors  was  suddenly  seized  by  a  rival  whom 
she  had  struck  down  some  thirty  years  before. 

The  effort  of  the  Kentishmen  to  break  out  of 
their  narrow  bounds  had  been  foiled  by  Ceawlin  at 
Wimbledon;  and  their  boy-king  had  fallen  back  on 


of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 

/Ethel  - 
berht 
of  Kent. 


his  petty  realm  only  to  watch  the  rise  of  his  con¬ 
queror  '  to  a  yet  greater  power  over  Britain.  But 
yEthelberht  had  never  ceased  to  aim  at  a  wider  sway; 
and  his  ambition  may  have  been  quickened  by  a 
marriage  that  linked  him  with  one  of  the  greatest 
states  of  the  Continent.  From  its  geographical  po¬ 
sition,  as  well  as  its  long  peace,  it  was  natural  that 


204 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Kent  should  be  the  first  of  the  English  states  to  re¬ 
new  that  intercourse  with  the  body  of  western  Chris¬ 
tendom  which  had  been  broken  by  the  conquest  of 
the  Saxon  Shore.  In  the  reign  of  the  Emperor  Jus¬ 
tinian — at  some  time,  therefore,  between  527  and  565 
(or  shortly  before  yEthelberht’s  accession) — “  men  of 
the  English  ”  had  been  sent  with  his  own  envoys  by 
one  of  the  Frankish  kings  of  Gaul  to  Constantino¬ 
ple  ;  and  their  presence  at  the  Imperial  Court  was 
welcomed  there  as  a  proof  that  the  island  of  Britain 
still  owned  the  rule  of  the  Caesars.1  We  can  hardly 
doubt,  from  the  date  of  this  visit,  that  these  English¬ 
men  were  men  of  the  Cantwara,  the  one  English  folk 
which  was  fairly  settled  in  Britain  at  so  early  a  time  ; 
while  their  presence  in  the  train  of  these  Frankish 
envoys  points  to  some  recognition  by  the  Kentish- 
men  of  the  supremacy  of  their  Frankish  neigh¬ 
bors,  whose  power  must  have  seemed  overwhelming 
at  this  time  to  the  struggling  invaders  of  Britain. 
Such  a  connection  would,  at  any  rate,  explain  the 
marriage  of  yEthelberht  with  Bertha,  a  daughter  of 
the  Frankish  king  Charibert.2  The  marriage  was 
in  itself  a  significant  one.  If,  as  seems  probable,  it 
took  place  in  the  years  that  immediately  followed 
the  battle  of  Faddiley,3  it  may  have  marked  the 

1  Procopius,  De  Bell.  Goth.  iv.  20.  Freeman,  Norman  Conquest, 
i.  30. 

2  Greg.  Turon.  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  26. 

3  Hithelberht’s  marriage  lies,  of  course,  between  the  battle  of 
Wimbledon  and  Augustine’s  arrival  (568-595).  Bertha’s  father, 
Charibert,  became  king  in  561 ;  and  as  Bertha  seems  to  have  been 
born  soon  after  her  father’s  accession  (Greg.  Turon.  iv.  21  ),  the 
marriage,  assuming  her  to  be  about  twenty  when  it  took  place,  lies 
at  about  583,  or  a  little  later.  It  may  have  followed  Fethanlea  in 
584.  Professor  Stubbs  (Diet.  Christ.  Biog.  i.  316)  thinks  it  was  prob- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


205 

awakening  of  larger  aims  in  the  Kentish  king  as  he 
saw  the  great  obstacle  to  his  ambition  crumble  into 
ruin.  Nor  was  it  less  important  in  its  results ;  for 
it  not  only  linked  the  fortunes  of  the  new  England 
with  those  of  the  German  states  which  were  grow¬ 
ing  up  upon  the  wreck  of  Roman  Gaul,* 1  but  was 
fated  in  the  end  to  knit  her  again  to  the  general 
fortunes  of  Western  Christendom. 

The  home  to  which  /Ethelberht  brought  his 
Frankish  wife  was  the  first  Teutonic  town  which  we 
know  to  have  arisen  on  the  soil  of  the  new  Eng¬ 
land.  Its  conquerors  had  hitherto  followed  the  bent 
of  their  race  in  leaving  the  cities  they  had  won  to 
ruin  and  to  solitude,  and  in  settling  in  “tun”  or 
“  thorpe  ”  in  the  country  about  them.  But  by  ^Ethel- 
berht’s  day  the  Kentish  kings  had  fixed  one  of  their 
homes  just  outside  the  northeastern  wall  of  Duro- 
vernum ;  and  some  of  the  Cantwara  had  drawn  into 
a  little  “  byryg,”  or  borough,  round  the  dwelling  of 
their  king.  From  this  first  Cantwara-byryg,  or  Can¬ 
terbury,  they  crept  forward  over  the  site  of  the  ru¬ 
ined  town.  How  utter  a  wreck  Durovernum  had 
become  in  the  century  since  its  fall,  we  see  by  com¬ 
paring  the  ground-plan  of  the  Roman  city  with  that 
of  the  city  which  thus  sprang  up  on  its  site.  Though 
the  continued  existence  of  its  Roman  walls  forced 
the  settlers  to  build  their  houses  in  lines  that  led, 
like  those  of  the  Roman  burghers,  from  gate  to  gate, 

ably  after  the  death  of  her  mother,  Ingoberg,  in  589.  Greg.  Turon. 
Hist.  Eccl.  ix.  26. 

1  The  connection  with  Frankish  Gaul,  however,  cannot  have  been 
a  very  close  one,  for  Gregory  of  Tours  (Hist.  Eccl.  ix.  26)  speaks 
of  Bertha  as  married  by  “  in  Cantia  regis  cujusdam  filius,”  whose 
name  he  clearly  did  not  know. 


chap.  v. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Canter¬ 

bury. 


206 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  yet  the  line  of  these  thoroughfares  was  not  adjusted 
The  strife  to  that  of  the  Roman  streets,  nor  were  the  sites  of 
°querorsn'  the  Roman  houses  taken  for  those  of  the  later  dwell- 
577-617  ings-  The  wreck  of  the  Roman  houses,  indeed,  is 
—  found  buried  so  deep  beneath  the  soil  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  Canterbury  that  they  must  have  sunk  into  ruins 
loim  before  the  Cantwara  found  a  home  in  Duro- 

O 

vernum.  Even  then  it  was  very  gradually  that  the 
new  borough  crept  forward  from  the  king’s  “  tun  ” 
over  the  site  of  its  predecessor ;  and  the  dedications 
of  its  churches,  marking  as  they  do  the  date  of  the 
parishes  in  which  they  were  raised,  show  that  the 
whole  area  within  the  walls  was  not  filled  up  till  the 
days  of  Dunstan  and  Eadgar.1 
jRthei-  But  even  the  stimulus  of  Bertha’s  marriage  could 
premacy.  hardly  have  spurred  /Ethelberht  to  a  renewal  of  his 
efforts,  had  not  the  sudden  ruin  of  Wessex  left  the 
field  open  to  his  arms.  British  soil,  indeed,  there 
was  no  longer  any  that  he  could  win ;  but  about  him 
lay  English  neighbors  who  might  be  forced  to  own 
his  supremacy.  We  know  nothing  of  the  marches 
or  battles  by  which  the  Kentish  king  asserted  his 
sway;  but  in  the  six  years  that  followed  the  battle 
of  Wanborough,  ./Ethelberht  raised  Kent  into  one  of 
the  great  powers  of  Britain.2  Even  in  Wessex  his 
power  was  owned  as  that  of  a  neighbor  whose  safe- 
conduct  was  sufficient  to  protect  men  in  passing 
through  the  very  heart  of  Ceolwulf’s  realm.3  But 


1  See  Faussett’s  “  Canterbury  before  Domesday,”  Archaeol.  Jour¬ 
nal,  vol.  xxxii. 

2  Baeda  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5)  shows  that  his  supremacy  was  established 
by  597. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  2:  “Adjutorio  usus  ^Edilbercti  regis  con- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


207 


elsewhere  he  bowed  his  neighbors  more  directly 
under  his  sway.  Even  the  South  Saxons  were  not 
sheltered  by  their  screen  of  woodland  and  fen  from 
the  grasp  of  the  conqueror.'  But  across  the  Thames 
yEthelberht  found  an  easier  prey;  and  in  597  his 
“  empire,”  to  use  Breda’s  word,  already  spread  along 
the  eastern  coast  as  far  as  to  the  banks  of  the  Hum¬ 
ber.* 1 2  He  was  overlord  of  the  East  Saxons,  whose 
king  was  wedded  to  his  sister  Ricula.3  The  East- 
Saxon  kingdom,  it  must  be  remembered,  comprised 
Hertfordshire  and  Middlesex  as  well  as  Essex  itself; 
and  London  also  passed  under  his  sway,  with  the 
men  who  had  so  recently  won  it.4  Northward  of  the 
Colne  his  supremacy  extended  not  only  over  the 
East  Anglians  under  their  king  Raedwald,  but  “  over 
all  the  countries  of  the  Southern  Engle  which  are 
parted  from  the  Engle  of  the  North  by  the  Humber, 
and  by  the  border-lands  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
Humber.”5  His  border-line  thus  ran  along  the 
Humber  and  across  the  great  swamp  of  the  Trent 
to  Sherwood,  across  the  valleys  of  the  Derwent  and 


vocavit  (Augustinus)  ad  suum  colloquium  episcopos  sive  doctores 
proximae  Brittonum  provinciae  ...  in  confinio  Hwicciorum  et  Occi- 
dentalium  Saxonum.” 

1  Malm.  Gest.  Pontif.  (Script,  post  Baed.  p.  133). 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25  :  “Ad  confinium  usque  Humbrae  fluminis 
maximi,  quo  meridiani  et  septentrionales  Anglorum  populi  dirimun- 
tur,  fines  imperii  tetenderat.” 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3  :  “In  qua  gente  Saberct,  nepos  Hidilbercti 
ex  sorore  Ricula,  regnabat.”  Sledda  was  Saberct ’s  father  (Florence 
of  Worcester,  ed.  Thorpe,  Geneal.  app.  ad  vol.  i.  p.  250). 

4  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3  :  “  Fecit  rex  Hldelberctus  in  civitate  Lun- 
donia  ecclesiam.” 

5  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5  :  “ Cunctis  australibus  eorum  (Anglorum) 
provinciis  quae  Humbrae  fluvio  et  contiguis  ei  terminis  sequestran- 
tur  a  borealibus  imperavit.” 


chap.  v. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Ccn- 
querors. 

577-617. 


208 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


char  v.  the  Dove  by  Neechvood  to  the  water-parting  which 
The  strife  formed  the  “march”  of  the  Mercians;  then,  bending 
°queror s'1  round  through  Arden,  it  followed  the  western  and 
577-617  southern  borders  of  Northamptonshire  to  the  borders 
—  of  the  Gyrwas  beside  Huntingdon,  and  struck  by  the 
Devil’s  Dyke  and  the  great  woodlands  to  the  west¬ 
ern  part  of  Hertfordshire,  to  the  Thames,  to  Sussex, 
and  the  sea. 

English  That  this  supremacy  of  /Ethelberht  was  no  mere 
s!Rome.‘  accident,  but  the  result  of  forces  which  were  acting 
universally  throughout  the  new  England,  is  seen  in 
the  fact  that  the  years  in  which  it  was  built  up  saw 
the  rise  of  a  power  hardly  inferior  to  that  of  Kent 
on  the  north  of  the  Humber.  Under  the  rule  of 
their  king,  /Ella,  the  Engle  of  Deira  are  said  not 
only  to  have  made  themselves  masters  of  the  country 
from  the  Humber  to  the  Wear,  but  to  have  taken 
advantage  of  the  discord  in  Bernicia  to  assert  a  su¬ 
premacy  over  their  fellow-Engle  to  the  north.1  If 
this  were  so,  we  find  the  origin  of  a  struggle  between 
the  two  peoples  in  /Ella’s  old-age  which  filled  the 
foreign  slave-markets  with  English  slaves.2  Noth¬ 
ing  marks  more  strongly  the  chasm  of  thought  and 
feeling  that,  in  spite  of  oneness  in  tongue,  blood,  and 
religion,  still  parted  the  English  tribes  from  one  an¬ 
other  than  the  cruel  usages  of  their  warfare.  A  war 


1  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  155,  156. 

2  The  date  of  Gregory’s  meeting  with  the  English  slaves  at  Rome 
is  fixed  between  585  and  588  by  the  fact  that  after  his  long  stay  at 
Constantinople  he  returned  to  Rome  in  585  or  586  (Pelagius  wrote 
to  him  at  Constantinople  in  October,  584,  while  a  letter  of  Pelagius 
to  Elias  in  586  is  said  to  have  been  composed  by  Gregory  at  Rome). 
On  the  other  hand,  ^Ella,  whom  the  slaves  owned  as  their  king,  died 
in  588. 


Utan/ord-'t  U<ographi 


210 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  between  two  English  peoples  was  carried  on  with 
The  strife  all  the  ruthlessness  of  a  war  between  strangers.  It 
°querorsn" was  purely  at  his  captor’s  will  that  ransom  saved  the 
577-617  n°ble  taken  in  battle  from  the  doom  of  death.  Slav- 
—  ery  alone  saved  from  death  a  captive  of  meaner  rank. 
At  a  far  later  time  than  this,  when  the  influence  of 
Christianity  had  done  much  to  soften  English  man¬ 
ners,  the  slaying  of  prisoners  in  cold  blood,  or  their 
sale  in  foreign  slave -markets,  remained  a  common 
matter.1  One  of  the  most  memorable  stories  in  our 
history  shows  us  a  group  of  such  slaves,  taken  in  this 
war  between  the  Bernicians  and  Deirans,  as  they 
stood  in  the  market-place  at  Rome,  it  may  be  the 
great  Forum  of  Trajan  which  still  in  its  decay  re¬ 
called  the  glories  of  the  Imperial  City.  Their  white 
bodies,  their  fair  faces,  their  golden  hair,  were  noted 
by  a  Roman  deacon  who  passed  by.2  “  From  what 
country  do  these  slaves  come  ?”  Gregory  asked  the 
trader  who  had  brought  them.  The  slave-dealer  an¬ 
swered,  “  They  are  English  ”  (or,  as  the  word  ran  in 
the  Latin  form  it  would  bear  at  Rome,  “they  are  An¬ 
gles”).  The  deacon’s  pity  vented  itself  in  poetic  hu¬ 
mor.  “  Not  Angles,  but  angels,”  he  said,  “with  faces 
so  angel-like.”  “From  what  country  come  they?” 
“  They  come,”  said  the  merchant,  “  from  Deira.” 
“  De  ira,”  was  the  untranslatable  word-play  of  the 


1  See  the  tale  in  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  22. 

s  Such  was  his  actual  position  in  the  Roman  hierarchy,  but  Greg¬ 
ory  was  already  the  virtual  director  of  the  Papacy.  He  was,  in  fact, 
one  of  the  seven  “  regionary  deacons  ”  of  Rome,  had  been  despatched 
by  the  popes  Benedict  the  First  and  Pelagius  the  Second  as  their 
envoy  for  some  years  at  the  Imperial  Court  of  Constantinople,  and 
in  a  more  personal  capacity  was  abbot  of  the  religious  house  he 
had  founded  on  the  Coelian. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


21  I 


vivacious  Roman ;  “  ay,  plucked  from  God’s  ire  and 
called  to  Christ’s  mercy!  And  what  is  the  name  of 
their  king?”  They  told  him  “./Ella;”  and  Gregory 
again  seized  on  this  word  as  of  good  omen.  “Alle¬ 
luia  shall  be  sung  in  /Ella’s  land,”  he  said,  and  passed 
on,  musing  how  the  “  angel-faces  ”  should  be  brought 
to  sing  it.' 

While  Gregory  was  thus  playing  with  Avila’s  name 
the  old  king  passed  away;  and  with  his  death,  in  588, 
the  strength  of  Deira  seems  suddenly  to  have  broken 
down."  As  the  Bernician  king,  /Ethelric,  entered 
Deira  in  triumph,  the  children  of  /Ella  fled  over  its 
western  border,  while  their  land  passed  under  the 
lordship  of  its  conqueror.  It  was  from  the  union  of 
the  two  realms  which  his  inroad  and  rule  brought 
about  that  a  new  kingdom  sprang  which  embraced 
them  both  —  the  kingdom  of  the  Northumbrians. 
The  supremacy  of  /Ethelric  was  thus  of  a  closer  and 
more  direct  sort  than  that  of  /Ethelberht;  for  while 
the  Kentish  king  was  content  to  rule  over  peoples 
who  retained  their  own  kingly  stock  and  political 
unity,  the  King  of  Bernicia  was  striving  to  establish 
a  direct  rule  over  Deiran  as  well  as  Bernician,  and  to 
blend  the  political  life  of  both  peoples  into  a  single 
realm.  Different,  however,  as  the  character  of  the 
two  lordships  might  be,  they  were  parts  of  the  same 
movement  towards  a  larger  unity;  and  with  their 
rise  the  aspect  of  the  conquered  Britain  was  sudden¬ 
ly  changed.  Instead  of  a  chaos  of  isolated  peoples, 
its  conquerors  were  gathered  into  three  great  groups, 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  1. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  588.  For  the  chronology  of  these  events,  see  Hus= 
sey's  edition  of  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  p.  99,  note. 


chap.  v. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Creation 
of  North¬ 
umbria. 


212 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Augustine. 


whose  existence  remained  the  key  to  the  history  of 
the  country  during  the  next  two  hundred  years.  The 
kingdom  of  the  north  had  reached  what  remained 
its  final  limits  from  the  Forth  to  the  Humber.  The 
southern  kingdom  of  the  West  Saxons  stretched 
from  the  line  of  Watling  Street  to  the  coast  of  the 
Channel.  And  between  these  was  already  roughly 
sketched  out  the  great  kingdom  of  Mid  -  Britain, 
which,  however  its  limits  might  vary  in  this  quarter 
or  that,  retained  a  substantial  identity  both  of  char¬ 
acter  and  of  area  from  the  days  of  FEthelberht  to  the 
final  fall  of  the  Mercian  kings. 

When  /Ethelfrith,  on  the  death  of  yEthelric,  be¬ 
came  king  of  Northumbria,  in  593,  this  threefold  di¬ 
vision  of  Britain  must  have  been  fairly  established ; 
and  of  its  three  powers  that  of  Afthelberht  was  the 
widest  and  the  most  important.  The  fame  of  it,  in¬ 
deed,  (Tossed  the  seas,  and  woke  to  fresh  life  the  mis¬ 
sion  projects  which  had  never  ceased  to  stir  in  the 
mind  of  Gregory  from  the  day  when  he  pitied  the 
English  slaves  in  the  market-place  of  Rome.  Only 
three  or  four  years  after  his  converse  with  them  in 
the  Forum,  Gregory  became  bishop  of  the  Imperial 
City,1  and  thus  found  himself  in  a  position  to  carry 
out  his  dream  of  winning  back  Britain  to  the  faith. 
The  marriage  of  Bertha  with  the  Kentish  king,  and 
the  rule  which  /Ethelberht  had  since  established 
over  a  large  part  of  the  island,  afforded  him  the  open¬ 
ing  he  sought ;  and,  after  cautious  negotiation  with 
the  Frankish  rulers  of  Gaul,2  who  promised  to  guard 
his  missionaries  on  their  way,  and  to  provide  them 


1  In  590. 


2  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  iii.  10. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


213 


with  interpreters,  Gregory  sent  a  Roman  abbot,  chap.  v. 
Augustine,  at  the  head  of  a  band  of  monks,  to  preach  The  strife 
the  Gospel  to  the  English  people.  The  missionaries  ofquerorsa 
landed  in  597  on  the  spot  where  Hengest  had  landed  57~7 
more  than  a  century  before  in  the  isle  of  Thanet ; 
and  the  interpreters  whom  they  had  chosen  among 
the  Franks  were  at  once  sent  to  the  king  with  news 
of  their  arrival,  as  well  as  with  promises  of  things 
strange  to  his  ears — of  joys  without  end  and  a  king¬ 
dom  forever  in  heaven. 

/Ethelberht  cannot  have  been  taken  by  surprise,  ffisarri- 
He  had  married  Bertha  on  the  condition  that  she  Kent. 
should  remain  a  Christian ;  her  chaplain,  Bishop 
Liudhard,  formed  a  part  of  the  Kentish  Court ;  and 
a  ruined  church  now  known  as  that  of  St.  Martin 
outside  the  new  Canterbury  had  been  given  him  for 
his  worship.  Negotiations  with  Bertha  and  with 
the  king  himself  had  probably  preceded  the  landing 
of  Augustine;  and  after  a  few  days’  delay  /Ethel- 
berht  crossed  into  Thanet  to  confer  with  the  new¬ 
comers.  They  found  him  sitting  in  the  open  air  on 
the  chalk  down  above  Minster,1  where  the  eye  now¬ 
adays  catches,  miles  away  over  the  marshes,  the  dim 
tower  of  Canterbury;  and  the  king  listened  patiently 
to  the  sermon  of  Augustine  as  the  interpreters  whom 
the  abbot  had  brought  with  him  rendered  it  in  the 
English  tongue.  “  Your  words  are  fair,”  he  answered, 
at  last,  with  English  good-sense  ;  “  but  they  are  new, 
and  of  doubtful  meaning.”  For  himself,  he  said,  he 
refused  to  forsake  the  gods  of  his  fathers ;  but,  with 
the  usual  religious  tolerance  of  the  German  race,  he 


'■  For  fear  of  magic  (Basda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25). 


214 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
cf  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Its  results. 


promised  shelter  and  protection  to  the  strangers 
within  his  own  king's  tun.  The  band  of  monks  en¬ 
tered  Canterbury  bearing  before  them  a  silver  cross 
with  a  picture  of  Christ,  and  singing  in  concert  the 
strains  of  the  litany  of  their  Church.  “  Turn  from 
this  city,  O  Lord,"  they  sang,  “  thine  anger  and 
wrath  ;  and  turn  it  from  thy  holy  house,  for  we  have 
sinned.”  And  then,  in  strange  contrast,  came  the 
jubilant  cry  of  the  older  Hebrew  worship — the  cry 
which  Gregory  had  wrested  in  prophetic  earnestness 
from  the  name  of  the  Yorkshire  king  in  the  Roman 
market-place,  “  Alleluia.” 1 

It  was  thus  that  the  spot  which  witnessed  the 
landing  of  Hengest  became  yet  better  known  as  the 
landing-place  of  Augustine.  But  the  second  land- 
ins:  at  Ebbsfleet  was  in  no  small  measure  a  reversal 
and  undoing  of  the  first.  “  Strangers  from  Rome"2 
was  the  title  with  which  the  missionaries  first  fronted 
the  English  king.  The  march  of  the  monks,  as  they 
chanted  their  solemn  litany,  was  in  one  sense  a  re¬ 
turn  of  the  Roman  lesdons  who  had  withdrawn  at  the 

O 

trumpet-call  of  Alaric.  It  was  to  the  tongue  and  the 
thought,  not  of  Gregory  only,  but  of  the  men  whom 
his  own  Jutish  fathers  had  slaughtered  and  driven 
over-sea  that  Afthelberht  listened  in  the  preaching 
of  Augustine.  Canterbury,  the  earliest  city-centre 
of  the  new  England,3  became  the  centre  of  Latin  in¬ 
fluence.  The  Roman  tongue  became  again  one  of 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25. 

2  “  Mittens  ad  Hldelberctum  (Augustinus)  mandavit  se  venisse  de 
Roma  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25). 

3  “  Dedit  eis  mansionem  in  civitate  Doruvernensi,  quae  imperii  sui 
totius  erat  metropolis  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  25). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


215 


the  tongues  of  Britain — the  language  of  its  worship,  chap.  v. 
its  correspondence,  its  literature.  But  more  than  The  strife 
the  tongue  of  Rome  returned  with  Augustine.  Prac-°fquerorsn 
tically  his  landing  renewed  that  union  with  the  West-  37^17 
ern  world  which  the  landing  of  Hengest  had  all  but 
destroyed.  The  new  England  was  admitted  into  the 
older  commonwealth  of  nations.  The  civilization, 
arts,  letters,  which  had  fled  before  the  sword  of  the 
English  conquerors,  returned  with  the  Christian 
faith.  The  fabric  of  the  Roman  law,  indeed,  never 
took  root  in  England;  but  it  is  impossible  not  to  rec¬ 
ognize  the  influence  of  the  Roman  missionaries  in 
the  fact  that  codes  of  the  customary  English  law  be¬ 
gan  to  be  put  into  writing  soon  after  their  arrival.1 
Of  yet  greater  import  was  the  weight  which  the  new 
faith  was  to  exercise  on  the  drift  of  the  English 
towards  national  unity.  It  was  impossible  for  Eng¬ 
land  to  become  Christian  without  seeing  itself  or- 
ganized  and  knit  together  into  a  single  life  by  its 
Christian  organization,  without  seeing  a  great  na¬ 
tional  fabric  of  religious  order  rise  up  in  the  face  of 
its  civil  disorder. 

As  yet,  however,  these  issues  of  the  new  faith  Gregory's 
were  still  distant.  For  some  years,  indeed,  after  the 
landing  of  the  missionaries  on  the  shores  of  Thanet, 
there  was  little  to  promise  any  extension  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  beyond  the  limits  of  Kent.  After  a  short 
time,  indeed,  zEthelberht  listened  to  the  preaching 


1  Hlthelbcrht's  laws  are  the  first  written  code  we  possess.  Oui 
inter  caetera  bona,  quae  genti  suae  consulendo  conferebat,  etiam  de- 
creta  illi  judiciorum,  juxta  exempla  Romanorum,  cum  consilio  sapi- 
entium  constituit ;  quae  conscripta  Anglorum  sermone  hactenus  ha- 
bcntur  et  observantur  ab  ea”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5). 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


2i  6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

of  the  missionaries,1  and  thousands  of  Kentish  men 
crowded  to  baptism  in  the  train  of  their  chief.2  Au¬ 
gustine,  who  had  as  yet  used  Bertha’s  Church  of  St. 
Martin  for  his  worship,3  now  received  from  the  king 
the  gift  of  another  ruined  church  beside  the  city 
as  the  seat  of  his  bishopric,  and  founded  there  the 
“  Christ  Church,”  which  still  remains  the  metropoli¬ 
tan  church  of  the  English  communion  ;  while  to  the 
eastward  of  Canterbury  rose  an  abbey  of  St.  Peter 
and  St.  Paul,  the  patron  saints  of  his  own  Rome,  in 
which  Augustine  and  his  successors  sat  as  abbots, 
and  where  the  Kentish  kings  found  from  that  time 
a  burial-place.  But  if  the  conversion  of  Kent  satis¬ 
fied  the  zeal  of  Augustine,  it  was  far  from  satisfying 
the  larger  aims  of  Pope  Gregory.  Four  years  after 
the  reception  of  his  missionaries,  it  seemed  to  the 
Roman  bishop  that  the  time  had  come  for  widening 
the  little  church  in  Kent  into  a  Church  of  Britain; 
and  in  6oi  fresh  envoys  from  Rome  brought  with 
them  a  plan  for  the  ecclesiastical  organization  of  the 
whole  island.4  It  was  characteristic  of  the  conserv¬ 
ative  temper  of  the  Roman  chancery,  as  well  as  a 
proof  of  the  utter  ignorance  of  the  country  which 
prevailed  across  the  Channel,  that  the  plan  was 
drafted  on  the  model  of  Britain  as  it  had  existed  un¬ 
der  the  Romans,  and  took  no  count  of  the  changes 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  26.  His  conversion  seems  to  have  been  in 

the  year  of  Augustine’s  landing,  597  ;  cf.  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5- 

3  Gregory,  writing  in  59^>  rejoices  that  at  the  past  Christmas 
“plus  quam  decern  millia  Angli  ab  eodem  nunciati  sunt  fratre 
(Augustino)  et  coepiscopo  nostro  baptizari  (Stubbs  and  Haddan, 
Councils,  iii.  12). 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  26. 

*  See  the  letter,  as  dated,  in  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  29. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


2  I  7 

which  had  been  wrought  by  its  conquest.  In  Ro¬ 
man  Britain,  London  and  York  had  been  the  lead¬ 
ing  cities,  and  it  was  London  and  York  that  Greg¬ 
ory  took  as  the  new  ecclesiastical  centres  of  the  isl¬ 
and.  Augustine  was  to  be  bishop  of  London,  with 
twelve  suffragans  in  the  south.  He  was  to  send  an¬ 
other  bishop  to  York,  who,  as  soon  as  Northern  Brit¬ 
ain  became  Christian,  was  in  turn  to  ordain  twelve 
suffragans  for  himself,  and  to  be  of  equal  rank  with 
Augustine’s  successors.  Time  was  to  modify  this 
programme ;  but  its  very  existence  was  significant. 
It  was  plain  that  if  Britain  became  Christian,  its 
conversion  to  the  new  faith  would  bring  with  it  a 
new  organization  of  the  whole  country,  and  that  the 
form  which  its  religious  life  must  assume  would  lead 
to  a  reconstruction  of  the  forms  which  its  civil  life 
had  hitherto  taken. 

But,  urgent  as  was  Gregory’s  appeal,  zEthelberht 
was  slow  to  use  his  overlordship  as  a  means  of 
forcing  the  peoples  beneath  his  sway  to  bow  to  the 
new  faith  which  he  and  his  people  had  embraced. 
Even  Augustine  seems  for  the  moment  to  have  pre¬ 
ferred  the  easier  enterprise — as  it  seemed — of  placing 
the  Kentish  Church  in  connection  with  the  Chris¬ 
tianity  which,  as  he  had  by  this  time  learned,  existed 
in  the  west  of  Britain.  His  journey,  “with  the  aid 
of  King  Afthelberht,”  across  the  territory  of  the 
West  Saxons  to  the  border-line  of  the  Hwiccas,1  and 


1  Brnda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  2.  The  place  of  conference  was  “  in  con- 
finio  Hwicciorum  et  Occidentalium  Saxonum.”  It  is  generally  put 
at  Aust  Passage  on  the  Severn ;  but  if  these  words,  as  I  believe, 
are  rightly  rendered,  “  on  the  border  between  the  Hwiccas  and  West 
Saxons,”  this  is  out  of  the  question ;  and  we  must  look  rather  to 


chap.  v. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


The  Brit¬ 
ons 


2  I  8 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


the  conference  with  the  Welsh  clergy  which  followed, 
bring  us  for  the  first  time  into  personal  contact  with 
what  remained  of  the  British  race.  As  yet  our 
glimpses  of  the  Britons  since  the  landing  of  Hen- 
gest  have  been  scant  and  dim  ;  and  we  learn  to  prize 
even  the  meagre  jottings  in  which  the  chronicle  of 
the  conquerors  tells  us  of  their  advance  over  Brit¬ 
ain,  as  we  turn  to  the  thick  darkness  which  during 
this  period  overspreads  the  story  of  the  British  de¬ 
fence.  How  stubborn  that  defence  had  been,  the 
very  length  of  the  struggle  has  told  us.  To  tear  the 
Saxon  Shore  from  the  grasp  of  its  defenders  was  a 
work  of  fifty  years  ;  and  even  when  the  Saxon  Shore 
was  lost,  when  its  cities  had  become  heaps  of  charred 
ruins,  when  the  fortresses  which  had  so  long  held 
the  pirates  at  bay  from  the  Wash  to  the  Solent  were 
but  squares  of  broken  and  desolate  walls,  the  coun¬ 
try  at  large  retained  its  cohesion,  and  faced  its  foes 
as  stubbornly  as  before.  Driven  as  they  were  from 
their  first  line  of  defence,  the  Britons  fell  back  on  an 
inner  line,  whose  natural  features  presented  yet  more 
formidable  obstacles  to  their  assailants,  and  the  isl¬ 
and,  as  a  whole,  remained  untouched  by  the  English 
sword.  The  next  seventy  years  saw  even  the  bulk 
of  Britain  reft  from  them.  But  throughout  the  long 
fight  the  British  resistance  remained  as  stubborn  as 
ever.  The  conquest  of  Yorkshire,  of  the  southern 
downs,  and  of  the  valley  of  the  Thames,  though  they 

some  such  place  as  the  later  Malmesbury,  near  this  border,  yet  still 
British  ground.  It  is  clear  that  the  Hwiccas  and  West  Saxons 
were  still,  as  in  Ceawlin’s  day,  politically  distinct,  and  we  have  seen 
that  at  that  time  Welsh  and  Hwiccas  were  allied.  If  this  alliance 
went  on,  the  presence  of  Welsh  clergy  in  this  border-line  is  easily 
accounted  for. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


2  I  9 

shook  the  province  more  roughly,  failed  to  break  it  chap.  v. 
up;  for  in  the  forest  of  Wyre  and  of  Arden  the  The  strife 
Britons  held  out  doggedly  against  the  Saxons,  while  °querorsn 
the  fastnesses  of  Charnwood  and  Sherwood  held  at  57^17 
bay  the  invaders  of  the  Trent  valley.  And  now  that  — 
even  Mid-Britain  was  gone,  and  that  the  provincials 
of  the  southwest  had  been  cut  off  from  the  general 
body  of  their  race,  the  Britons  still  faced  the  West 
Saxons  along  the  lower  Severn,  still  held  the  Mer¬ 
cians  at  bay  along  the  head -waters  of  the  Trent, 
while  alonsf  the  dark  range  of  moors  from  Elmet  to 
Selkirk  they  barred  the  advance  of  the  Deirans  and 
Bernicians  of  the  north. 

But,  long  before  this  point  in  the  strife  was  reached,  Their  dis- 
the  contest  had  told  fatally  on  their  political  and  so-  *'<w. 
cial  condition.  In  the  unconquered  part  of  Britain, 
indeed,  the  war  had  produced  results  almost  as  great 
as  in  the  conquered.  Severed  from  connection  with 
the  Empire  or  with  the  rest  of  Europe,  broken  by 
defeats,  wasted  by  incessant  forays,  what  remained 
of  the  province  lost,  little  by  little,  even  the  sem¬ 
blance  of  unity.  The  disorganization  which  had  be¬ 
gun  in  the  strife  of  the  native  and  Romanized  par¬ 
ties  cannot  but  have  widened  as  time  went  on.  In 
the  more  remote  and  uncivilized  parts  of  the  prov¬ 
ince  west  of  the  Yorkshire  moorlands  and  the  Sev¬ 
ern,  in  what  was  afterwards  called  Cumbria,  or  the 
district  from  the  Clyde  to  the  Dee — in  the  country 
which  now  answers  to  Wales,  Devon,  and  Cornwall — 
the  native  party  definitely  got  the  upperhand,1  while 
in  Mid-Britain  the  Romanized  cities  may  have  re- 

1  This  is  shown  by  the  list  of  princes  in  the  Epistola  of  Gildas, 
cc.  i-8. 


220 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  tained  their  supremacy.  But  everywhere  there  was 
The  strife  the  same  fatal  tendency  to  faction  and  severance. 
Cquerorsn  Save  at  moments  of  utter  peril,  no  one  chieftain 
577-617  united  the  native  tribes  under  his  sway,  no  one  city 
—  or  league  of  cities  gathered  the  towns  around  it.  A 
crowd  of  petty  princes  jostled  and  battled  over  the 
surface  of  the  west;  while  each  town  isolated  itself 
within  its  own  district  of  subject  country,  and  only 
joined  its  immediate  neighbors  for  defence  on  the 
approach  of  the  Englishmen. 

Augustine  In  this  political  chaos,  the  old  Roman  civilization 
Britons,  died  slowly  away.  History  and  tradition  alike  rep¬ 
resent  the  chiefs  of  the  west  as  having  sunk  into 
utter  barbarians.  In  the  district  which  they  ruled, 
order  and  law  had  well-nigh  disappeared  in  an  out¬ 
break  of  greed,  of  bloodshed,  and  of  lust,  against 
which  a  Christianity  that  was  fast  sinking  into  mere 
superstition,  and  that  seems  to  have  been  threatened 
for  a  while  by  apostasy,  battled  in  vain.  A  chaos,  at 
once  political  and  religious,  such  as  this  gave  little 
chance  of  welcome  to  a  stranger,  Christian  though 
he  were,  who  suddenly  came  from  the  midst  of  the 
conquerors,  and,  under  the  protection  of  an  English 
king,  to  claim  communion  with  the  Welsh,  and  to 
call  on  them  to  unite  in  preaching  the  Gospel  to 
their  English  foes.  Augustine  found,  indeed,  more 
obstacles  than  mere  national  hate.  So  little  did  the 
Roman  missionaries  know  of  the  country  to  which 
they  had  been  sent1  that  it  was  as  a  surprise  that 


1  Augustine’s  successor,  Laurentius,  owned  that  he  and  his  fellow- 
missionaries  came  to  Britain  without  any  knowledge  of  the  island. 
“  Dum  nos  sedes  apostolica  ...  in  his  occiduis  partibus  ad  praedi- 
candum  gentibus  paganis  dirigeret,  atque  in  hanc  insulam,  quae 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


22  1 


they  found  themselves  confronted  by  Christians  CHAP- v- 
whose  usages  were  in  some  ways  not  their  own — The  strife 
who,  above  all,  celebrated  Easter  at  a  different  sea-°querorsn 
son* 1 — and  who,  in  their  horror  at  these  differences,  5rf^17 
refused  not  only  to  eat  with  the  Roman  priests,  but 
even  to  take  their  meals  in  the  same  house  with 
them.2  A  miracle,  which  Augustine  believed  him¬ 
self  to  have  wrought,  failed  to  convince  the  Welsh 
of  their  errors  in  these  matters;  and  when  seven  of 
their  bishops,  with  monks  and  scholars  from  the  great 
abbey  at  Bangor  by  the  Dee,  assembled  at  the  place 
of  conference — a  place  which  still  in  Baeda’s  day  pre¬ 
served  its  name  of  “  Augustine’s  Oak  ” — they  were  in 
no  humor  for  hearkening  to  his  claims  on  their  obe¬ 
dience  as  archbishop.  The  story  ran  that  they  con¬ 
sulted  a  solitary  as  to  their  course.  “  Let  the  stranger 
arrive  first,”  replied  the  hermit;  “if  then  he  rise  at 
your  approach,  hear  him  submissively  as  one  meek 
and  lowly,  and  who  has  taken  on  him  the  yoke  of 
Christ.  But  if  he  rise  not  at  your  coming,  and  de¬ 
spise  you,  let  him  also  be  despised  of  you.”  Augus¬ 
tine  failed  to  rise ;  and  the  conference  broke  off  with 
threats  from  the  Roman  missionaries  that  if  the  Brit¬ 
ons  would  not  join  in  peace  with  their  brethren,  they 
should  be  warred  upon  by  their  enemies.3 

The  conference  at  Augustine’s  Oak  is  memorable  R™ivai  of 
as  the  opening  of  a  conflict  between  the  two  great  ons. 

Britannia  nuncupatur,  contigit  introisse  antequam  cognosceremus ; 
credentes  quod  juxta  morera  universalis  ecclesiae  ingrederentur,  in 
magna  reverentia  sanctitatis  tarn  Brittones  quam  Scottos  venerati 
sumus  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  4). 

1  We  shall  have  to  deal  later  on  with  these  differences. 

3  See  Dagan’s  refusal,  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  4. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  2. 


222  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

char  v.  branches  of  the  Western  Church,  the  Celtic  and  the 
The  strife  Roman,  which  was  to  be  fought  out  in  many  lands, 
querors.  but  nowhere  with  more  violence  than  in  the  new 
577-617.  England.  But  to  the  Britons  who  took  part  in  it, 
it  had  probably  little  religious  significance.  Their 
horror  at  the  variance  of  usages,  their  resentment  at 
the  claims  on  their  obedience,  only  gave  an  edge  to 
their  indignation  at  being  called  on  to  join  in  a  work 
of  conversion  which  of  itself  recognized  the  English 
as  permanent  masters  of  the  soil  they  had  won.  At 
no  moment,  indeed,  could  they  have  been  less  inclined 
to  such  a  recognition ;  for  the  time  at  which  Augus¬ 
tine  appeared  before  them  was  a  time  of  national 
revival.  To  Gildas,  as  to  every  man  of  his  race,  the 
success  of  the  invader  had  seemed  due  to  the  polit¬ 
ical  disorganization  among  the  British  themselves, 
to  the  moral  disorganization  which  accompanied  it, 
and  to  the  absence  of  any  common  and  national  re¬ 
sistance  which  followed  from  this  disorganization. 
But  the  very  triumphs  of  the  English  had  done 
something  to  restore  political  unity  to  the  chaos 
which  called  itself  Britain.  What  were  now  left  un¬ 
conquered  were  its  purely  Celtic  portions — the  dis¬ 
tricts  along  its  western  coast,  where  the  wild  coun¬ 
try  and  the  scarcity  of  towns  had  given  the  Roman 
tradition  but  little  hold,  and  where,  even  under  the 
Roman  rule,  the  native  chieftains  had  probably  been 
suffered  to  maintain  much  of  their  older  sovereignty 
over  their  clans.  In  the  break-up  of  national  life 
during  the  years  that  had  passed  since  the  with¬ 
drawal  of  the  Imperial  administration,  such  chiefs 
had  become  independent  lords  of  distinct  provinces ; 
and  their  feuds  and  lawnessness  broke  the  strength 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


223 

of  the  island.  In  the  midst  of  the  sixth  century, 
Gildas  paints  for  us  a  terrible  picture  of  the  savage 
chieftains  who  parted  Damnonia  and  our  Wales  be¬ 
tween  them.1  But  even  then  the  growing  pressure 
of  the  invaders  was  making  this  mere  chaos  of  jarring 
princes  impossible.  The  pettier  British  states  were 
being  forced  to  group  themselves  before  the  stran¬ 
ger.  In  the  peninsula  of  the  southwest,  Constan¬ 
tine,  a  descendant,  it  may  be,  of  Ambrosius  Aureli- 
anus,  was  owned  as  supreme.  West  of  the  Severn, 
Maelgwn,  a  prince  of  what  we  now  know  as  North 
Wales,  towered  above  his  brother  rulers.  The  petty 
states  from  the  Derwent  to  Dumbarton  were  fused 
together  in  a  kingdom  of  Strath  -  Clyde.  The  con¬ 
solidation  gave  a  new  vigor  to  the  British  resist¬ 
ance  ;  and  the  rout  of  Ceawlin  at  Faddiley  was  but 
the  first  proof  of  the  change.  Not  only  were  the 
Welsh  strong  enough  to  drive  back  the  West  Sax¬ 
ons  from  the  upper  valley  of  the  Severn,  and  for 
twenty  years  after  to  hold  its  eastern  passes  against 
the  advance  guard  of  the  Engle  who  were  pressing 
up  the  Trent,  but  they  were  strong  enough  to  be¬ 
come  aggressors  in  their  turn,  to  penetrate  into  the 
heart  of  the  country  from  which  they  had  been 
driven  half  a  century  before,  and  to  humble  the 
pride  of  Wessex  on  the  battle-ground  of  Wanbor- 
ough. 

These  triumphs  in  the  south  were  but  a  few  years 
old  when  Augustine  came  to  call  them  to  reconcil¬ 
iation  with  their  foes.  And  at  that  very  moment 
triumphs  as  great  seemed  impending  in  the  north. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Britons 
and  Scots. 


1  Epistola,  cc.  1-8. 


224 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  From  the  moment  of  his  accession  to  the  Northum- 
The strife  brian  throne  in  593,  /Ethelfrith  had  taken  up  the 
°qn«orsn  work  of  conquest  with  a  ruthless  vigor.  His  sword 
577-617  became  the  terror  of  the  Welsh  along  his  whole 
—  western  border,  from  the  Yorkshire  moorlands  to  the 
dykes  and  forests  which  sheltered  the  Britons  of 
Clydesdale.1 2  But  fierce  as  /Ethelfrith’s  attack  was, 
it  was  only  ten  years  after  his  accession  that  his  ad¬ 
vance  in  this  quarter  became  so  threatening  as  to 
unite  in  one  vast  confederacy  the  whole  force  of  the 
countries  along  his  border.  The  Welsh  states  of  the 
north  had  united  in  a  kingdom  of  Strath  -  Clyde ; 3 
and  the  men  of  Strath-Clyde  found  at  this  juncture 
allies  in  a  neighbor  race.  At  the  close  of  the  Ro¬ 
man  rule  over  Britain,  settlers  from  the  north  of 
Ireland  (whose  inhabitants  then  bore  the  name  of 
Scots)  crossed  the  strait  of  sea  between  Ulster  and 
Cantyre,  and  founded  a  Scot  or  Irish  kingdom,  the 
kingdom  of  Dalriada,  around  the  shores  of  Loch 
Linnhe.  This  little  kingdom  had  rested  till  now 
in  obscurity ;  but,  freeing  itself  gradually  from  the 
claims  of  overlordship  put  forward  by  the  sover¬ 
eigns  of  Ireland,  and  holding  its  own  against  the 
Piets,  who  surrounded  it  on  the  north  and  the  east, 
it  started,  towards  the  close  of  the  sixth  century, 
into  a  new  and  vigorous  life.  It  is  possible  that  an 
impulse  was  given  to  it  by  an  Irish  exile,  Colum  or 
Columba,  who  landed  in  563  in  the  little  isle  of  Hii 
off  the  Pictish  coast,  and  founded  there  a  religious 
house  which  was  destined  to  be  the  Christian  centre 
of  Northern  Britain.  The  isle  lay  within  the  do- 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  34. 

2  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  159. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


225 


minions  of  the  Piets,  but  the  sympathies  of  Columba  CHAI>-  v- 
naturally  drew  him  to  his  Irish  kinsmen  round  Loch  The  strife 
Linnhe ;  and  after  ten  years  of  a  prosperous  rule  at  °queror°n 
Hii,  his  legend  tells  us  that  he  was  bidden  by  an  577f^17 
angel  to  consecrate  Aedhan,  the  son  of  Gafran,  as  — 
King  of  Dalriada.1 

The  consecration  of  Aedhan  in  S74  set  him  high  D^ssa- 
among  his  neighbor  chieftains ;  and  his  success  in 
driving  the  Bernicians  from  the  district  south  of  the 
head  of  the  Firth  of  Forth,2  which  was  long  a  de¬ 
batable  land  between  the  various  races  that  sur¬ 
rounded  it,  set  him  in  the  forefront  of  the  struggle 
against  their  kings.  The  series  of  fights  which  went 
on  in  that  quarter  for  the  twenty  years  between  580 
and  600  were  the  prelude  to  the  more  formidable 
attack  of  603.  In  spite  of  his  seventy  years,3  Aedhan 
stood  first  in  the  league  which  formed  itself  in  that 
year  against  Northumbria;  and  it  was  under  his 
command  that  the  hosts  of  Scots  and  Britons  which 
had  gathered  from  the  whole  district  between  the 
Lune  and  the  lakes  of  Argyle  marched  upon  Liddes- 
dale.  The  point  at  which  they  struck  was  the  key 
of  /Ethelfrith’s  kingdom ;  for  from  the  vale  of  the 
Liddel  one  pass  leads  into  the  valley  of  the  Teviot 
and  the  Tweed,  and  another  into  that  of  the  Tyne.4 
But  this  important  position  was  guarded  by  the 
rampart  of  the  Cattrail,  which  formed  the  boundary 
between  Northumbria  and  Strath-Clyde ;  and  here, 


1  Adamnan,  Life  of  Columba,  ed.  Reeves,  p.  198  and  note. 

3  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  160. 

3  Tighernach  places  his  birth  in  533  (Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  160, 
note). 

*  Skene,  Celtic  Scotland,  i.  162. 

15 


226 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.V.  at  Daegsa’s  Stone,  whose  name  we  still  catch  in  the 
ihe  strife  village  of  Dawston,  zEthelfrith  awaited  his  foe.  The 
querors11  fight  was  a  long  and  obstinate  one ;  Theodbald,  a 
577^617  brother  of  /Ethelfrith,  was  slain,  and  the  whole  force 
he  led  cut  to  pieces.  But  the  victory  of  the  North¬ 
umbrians  was  only  the  more  complete.  The  field 
was  heaped  with  British  dead,  while  of  Aedhan’s 
whole  army  only  a  few  warriors  succeeded  in  escap¬ 
ing  with  their  king.1  The  blow  dissolved  the  con¬ 
federacy  which  had  threatened  Northumbria.  The 
Scot  power,  indeed,  was  utterly  broken  ;  “  from  that 
day  to  this,”  Bmda  cries,  in  accents  of  unwonted  tri¬ 
umph,  more  than  a  hundred  years  later,  “  no  Scot 
king  has  dared  to  come  into  Britain  to  battle  with 
the  English  folk.”  And  while  the  Scots  withdrew 
to  their  far-off  fastnesses,  the  Welsh  themselves  lay 
at  the  conqueror’s  mercy.  No  effort,  indeed,  was 
made  to  seize  their  land  for  English  settlement;2 
but  we  cannot  doubt  that  the  submission  and  tribute 
which  we  find  Strath-Clyde  owing  to  later  kings  of 
Northumbria  were  the  result  of  /Ethelfrith’s  victory 
at  Daegsa’s  Stone. 

Conversion  While  Northumbria  was  thus  widening  its  lord- 

of  East  %  ^  ° 

Saxons,  ship  in  the  north,  /Ethelberht  was  at  last  entering 
on  the  great  experiment  of  Christianizing  his  domin¬ 
ion  in  Mid-Britain,  which  Gregory  and  Augustine 


1  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  34. 

5  This  comes  vividly  out  in  the  sites  of  the  royal  “vills.”  “In 
Byeda's  day,”  says  Mr.  Hodgson  Hinde  (Transac.  Hist.  Soc.  of  Lane, 
and  Cheshire,  viii.  11),  “among  the  numerous  villas  maintained  for 
the  migrator}^  residence  of  the  royal  household,  not  one  occurs  be¬ 
yond  the  chain  of  hills  which  separated  the  eastern  district  of  the 
Northumbrian  kingdom  from  the  west.  The  reason  is  obvious, 
that  even  then  no  attempt  was  made  to  colonize  the  latter.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


227 


had  urged  upon  him.  His  delay  showed  his  sense  chap.  v. 
of  its  risk ; 1  for  it  was  three  years  after  Gregory’s  The  strife 
appeal,  and  seven  years  after  the  conversion  of  his0^®^®11' 
own  kingdom,  before  /Ethelberht  ventured  on  push-  57^17 
ing  the  new  faith  across  its  borders.  In  604,  Augus-  — 
tine  set  Justus  as  bishop,  in  the  “  Rochester”  which 
had  risen  on  the  ruins  of  Durobrevis,5  over  all  the 
Kentish  kingdom  west  of  the  Medway.  The  diocese 
may  mark  a  dependent  realm  of  West  Kent,  whose 
relation  to  the  common  Kentish  king  would  be  re¬ 
flected  in  the  subordination  of  this  see  to  the  moth¬ 
er  see  at  Canterbury ;  as  the  memory  of  the  house 
of  St.  Andrew  on  the  Coelian,  from  which  the  first 
English  missionary  had  come,  was  preserved  in  the 
dedication  to  St.  Andrew  of  the  church  which 
Mithelberht  founded  and  endowed  at  Rochester. 

But  his  next  step  was  a  more  important  one.  Of 
all  his  dependent  kingdoms,  Essex  was  most  closely 
linked  to  the  Kentish  king.  His  sister  Ricula  had 
been  wedded  to  the  East-Saxon  king,  Sledda;  and 
their  son,  /Ethelberht’s  nephew,  Saeberct,  was  now 
ruling  as  an  under-king  over  that  people.3 *  The  little 
kingdom  had  been  raised  into  consequence  by  its 
conquest  of  London  in  Avthelberht’s  boyhood  ;  for  if 
the  city  had  been  for  a  while  laid  waste,  the  natural 
advantages  of  its  position  soon  began  to  draw  com- 


1  Gregory’s  letter  is  dated  601  ;  iEthelberht’s  first  effort  to  carry 
it  out  was  in  604. 

2  “  Justum  vero  in  ipsa  Cantia  Augustinus  episcopum  ordinavit  in 
civitate  Durobrevi,  quam  gens  Anglorum  a  primario  quondam  il- 
lius,  qui  dicebatur  Hrof,  Hrofascaestre  agnominat”  (Baeda,  Hist. 
Eccl.  ii.  3). 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3 :  “  Regnabat,  quamvis  sub  potestate  posi- 

tus  Hidelbercti.” 


228 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.V.  merce  and  inhabitants  once  more  to  its  site;  and  in 
The  strife  the  early  years  of  the  seventh  century  it  was  already 
querors.  a  dwelling  -  place  of  Englishmen.'  In  604,  Mellitus 
577-617.  was  sent  as  bishop  to  preach  to  the  East  Saxons;1 2 
and  so  complete  seemed  the  success  of  his  preach¬ 
ing  in  the  conversion  of  Saeberct  and  his  folk  that 
yEthelberht  began  the  building  of  a  church  of  St. 
Paul  as  the  bishop’s  stool  of  the  new  diocese  in  Lon¬ 
don  itself.3  His  act — for  there  is  no  mention  even 
of  Saeberct’s  co-operation — marks  how  direct  was  his 
rule  over  the  East-Saxon  realm.  But  the  site  of  the 
new  church  is  hardly  less  significant.  Though  set¬ 
tlers  were  again  repeopling  London,  the  western  ex¬ 
tremity  of  the  Roman  city  can  still  have  been  but 
a  waste  in  604 ;  for  not  only  could  the  new  church 
be  placed  there,  but  its  precincts  embraced,  even  to 
the  Middle  Ages,  a  large  district  around  it,  which 
stretched  almost  from  the  river  to  Newgate,  and 
from  near  the  wall  as  far  inland  as  Cheapside. 

Radwaid  The  conversion  of  the  East  Saxons,  and  the  suc- 
Angiia.  cess  of  the  first  step  in  that  general  attack  on  Eng¬ 
lish  heathendom  which  he  had  so  vigorously  urged 
on  /Ethelberht,  must  have  been  among  the  last 


1  “  Orientalium  Saxonum  .  .  .  quorum  metropolis  Lundonia  civi- 
tas  est,  super  ripam  praefati  fluminis  posita,  ei  ipsa  multorum  em¬ 
porium  populorum  terra  marique  venientium.”  From  the  “est” 
and  “metropolis,”  I  take  the  latter  words  of  Bseda  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii. 

3)  to  refer,  not  to  Hithelberht’s  day,  but  to  his  own  in  the  eighth 
centuiyr,  when  the  city  was  the  “  mother  city  ”  of  the  East-Saxon 
diocese. 

3  Baeda  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3)  says  that  in  604  Mellitus  was  sent  “ad 
praedicandum  ”  in  Essex,  and  that,  when  the  province  at  his  preach¬ 
ing  received  the  word,  HJthelberht  built  the  Church  of  St.  Paul  in 
London.  The  building  was  thus  after  604,  but  probably  soon  after. 

3  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


229 


news  which  reached  Gregory  the  Great  ere  he  died,  chap,  v. 
in  606.  His  death  was  soon  followed  by  that  of  The  strife 
Augustine  himself;  whose  body  was  laid  beside  the ^erors11' 
walls  of  his  Church  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  which  57~7 
was  now  rising  to  completion.1  But  the  death  of 
Gregory  was  only  the  prelude  to  a  fresh  step  for¬ 
ward  in  the  realization  of  his  plans.  Raedwald,  the 
King  of  the  East  Anglians,  was  summoned  to  /Ethel- 
berht’s  court ;  and  the  pressure  of  his  overlord  suf¬ 
ficed  to  induce  him  to  receive  baptism  as  a  Chris¬ 
tian.'1 3  But  on  his  return  home  he  found  no  will 
among  the  East  Anglians  to  accept  the  new  faith ; 
and  their  reluctance  was  backed  by  the  opposition  of 
his  wife.”"  Raedwald  strove  to  satisfy  the  conflicting 
will  of  his  overlord  and  his  own  people  by  a  charac¬ 
teristic  compromise.  He  retained  the  older  gods, 
but  he  placed  the  new  Christ  among  them,  and  set 
a  Christian  altar  in  the  temples  beside  the  altar  of 
the  deities  of  his  race.4 

That  such  a  compromise  would  content  /Ethel- 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  3. 

3  Baeda  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15)  gives  no  date  for  Raedwald’s  baptism, 
his  subsequent  apostasy,  or  his  after-rise  to  independence.  But  the 
first  must  have  been  after  the  conversion  of  Essex  in  604,  and  the 
last  was  some  while  before  /Ethelberht’s  death,  in  616  (Baeda,  Hist. 
Eccl.  ii.  5).  (See  posted ,  p.  231,  note  2.)  The  baptism  was  “  in  Can- 
tia”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15);  the  apostasy,  “rediens  domum.” 

3  “  Rediens  domum,  ab  uxore  sua  et  quibusdam  perversis  doctori- 
bus  seductus  est”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15). 

4  “  Ita  ut,  in  morem  antiquorum  Samaritanorum,  et  Christo  ser- 
vire  videretur  et  diis  quibus  antea  serviebat;  atque  in  eodem  fano 
et  altare  haberet  ad  sacrificium  Christi,  et  arulam  ad  victimas  dae- 
moniorum ’’  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15).  What  is  odder  is  that  this 
temple  with  its  two  altars  lasted  almost  to  Baeda's  day.  “  Ouod  fa- 
num  rex  ejusdem  provinciae  Aldwulf,  qui  nostra  aetate  fuit,  usque 
ad  suum  tempus  perdurasse,  et  se  in  pueritia  vidisse  testabatur.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


230 

chap.  v.  berht  was  little  likely;  and  we  can  hardly  fail  to  con- 
The  strife  nect  the  strife  which  must  have  arisen  over  this  re- 
querors.  jection  of  the  religion  of  Kent  with  the  next  inci- 
577--617  dent  in  the  history  of  East  Anglia.  It  was  “while 
„  Avthelberht  was  still  living  ”  that  Raedwald  took  his 
supremacy,  place  as  overlord  in  Mid-Britain.1  Religion,  indeed, 
may  have  furnished  only  a  pretext  for  the  rising  of 
the  East  Anglians.  At  this  moment  they  formed 
the  strongest,  as  they  were  the  most  clearly  defined, 
of  the  central  tribes  between  the  Humber  and  the 
Thames.  From  the  rest  of  the  island  their  land  was 
almost  entirely  cut  off  by  the  fens  that  bordered  it 
on  the  north,  and  bent  round  to  join  the  great  forest 
belt  which  stretched  along  its  western  border,  while 
the  broad  estuary  of  the  Stour  parted  it  from  Essex 
on  the  south.  The  easy  access  to  its  shores  from 
the  German  coast  had  probably  aided  in  giving  a 
specially  Teutonic  character  to  its  population ;  and 
the  recent  gathering  of  its  conquering  tribes  under 
a  single  king  furnished  a  stock  of  warlike  energy 
which  found  an  outlet  in  the  subjection  of  their 
neighbors.  It  was,  we  can  hardly  doubt,  from  a  rec¬ 
ognition  of  their  superior  strength,  that,  while  the 
East  Saxons  still  clung  to  the  Kentish  king,2  the  rest 
of  his  subject  peoples  threw  off  his  supremacy,  and 
accepted  in  its  place  the  supremacy  of  Rmdwald. 
Of  the  incidents  of  this  great  revolution  we  are  told 

1  After  describing  /Ethelberht’s  “  imperium  ’’  over  the  English 
states  south  of  the  Humber,  and  stating  that  Hithelberht  was  the 
third  who  “  imperium  hujusmodi  obtinuit,”  Baeda  says,  “  quartus, 
Raedwald,  rex  Orientalium  Anglorum,  qui  etiam  vivente  Hidilbercto 
eidcm  suae  genti  ducatum  praebebat”  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5). 

2  I  conclude  this  from  Mellitus  remaining  at  London  till  /Ethel- 
berht’s  death  (Boeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


231 


nothing.  But,  revolution  as  it  was,  it  marked  how 
permanent  the  threefold  division  of  Britain  had  now 
become.  If  Mid-Britain  threw  off  the  supremacy  of 
Kent,  its  states  none  the  less  remained  a  political 
aorcrreorate ;  and  their  fresh  union  under  the  Kino:  of 
East  Anglia  was  only  a  prelude  to  their  final  and 
lasting  union  under  the  lordship  of  Mercia. 

That  the  revolution  which  set  Raedwald  of  East 
Anglia  over  the  tribes  of  Mid-Britain  was  wrought 
with  so  little  change,  save  the  isolation  of  Kent  and 
of  Essex,  was  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  both  the 
great  powers  of  the  south  and  of  the  north  were  too 
busied  at  the  time  with  troubles  of  their  own  to  med¬ 
dle  in  those  of  their  neighbors.  In  Wessex,  Ceol- 
wulf  was  still  carrying  on  the  long  strife  of  his  reign, 
and  battling  “  incessantly  against  Angles  or  Welsh.”1 
To  the  civil  struggles  within  his  realm  were  added 
attacks  from  without.  In  607  we  find  him  fighting 
on  the  southeastern  border  of  his  kingdom  against 
the  South  Saxons  ;2  and  when  he  was  succeeded  by 
his  nephew  Cynegils,  the  grandson  of  Cutha,  in  61 1, 3 
the  accession  of  the  young  king  was  followed  by  an 
inroad  of  the  Britons  which  carried  them  into  the 
heart  of  the  realm.  In  6 14,  Cynegils  fought  at  Bamp- 
ton  in  Oxfordshire  against  the  Welshmen,  and  the 
importance  of  the  battle  was  shown  by  the  fall  of 
twTo  thousand  Britons  on  the  field.4  How  vigorous 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  597. 

2  E.  Chron.  a.  607.  This  loss  of  Sussex  may  mark  the  date  of  the 
break-up  of  Althelberht’s  supremacy. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  61 1. 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  614.  “  This  year  Cynegils  and  Cwichelm  fought  at. 

Beandun,  and  slew  three  thousand  and  sixty -five  Welshmen.” 
Beandun  is  supposed  to  be  Bampton  in  Oxfordshire.  If  so,  the 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Aithel- 

frith. 


232 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


char  v.  the  temper  of  the  Welsh  continued  to  be  is  clear 
The  strife  from  the  fact  that  this  inroad  of  the  Southern  Britons 
querors.  into  Wessex  followed  one  of  the  most  terrible  over- 
577-617  throws  which  the  Britons  of  the  north  had  as  yet  re- 
ceived.  Since  his  victory  at  Daegsa’s  Stan,  in  603, 
the  energies  of  /Ethelfrith  seem  to  have  been  spent 
in  coping  with  the  disaffection  of  Deira.  The 
spirit  of  national  independence  was  quickened  afresh 
among  the  Deirans  as  the  heirs  of  their  kingly  stock 
grew  to  manhood,  and  the  presence  of  these  heirs  on 
his  border  became  a  danger  which  called  /Ethelfrith 
to  action.  On  the  fall  of  Deira,  the  House  of  /Ella 
had  found  a  refuge,  it  is  said,  among  their  British 
neighbors ;  and  at  this  time — if  we  accept  Welsh  tra¬ 
dition — they  were  sheltered  by  the  King  of  Gwynedd, 
a  district  which  then  embraced  the  bulk  of  the  pres¬ 
ent  North  Wales,* 1  and  through  its  outlier  of  Elmet 
pushed  forward  into  the  heart  of  Southern  Deira. 
The  danger  of  a  league  between  the  Deirans  and 
the  Welsh  was  one  which  .^Ethelfrith  could  not  over¬ 
look  ;  and  it  was  to  meet  this  danger  that  he  broke 
in  613  through  the  barrier  that  had  so  long  held  the 
Engle  of  the  north  at  bay. 


raid  was  on  the  valley  of  the  Cherwell,  and  the  Welsh  may  have 
struck  over  the  Cotswolds  by  Cirencester.  They  may  have  been  in 
league,  as  before,  with  the  Hwiccas. 

1  We  shall  return  afterwards  to  these  sons  of  JE  11a.  All  we  know 
from  English  sources  is  that  in  614 — a  year  later — Hereric  (^Ella’s 
grandson)  and  his  family  “  exularet  sub  rege  Brittonum  Cerdice  " 
(Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23),  and  with  him  may  have  been  ^Ella's  son 
Eadwine.  But  who  was  this  “  King  Cerdic  of  the  Britons?”  Hus¬ 
sey  (note  to  Baeda,  p.  225)  makes  him  a  king  “  in  Elmet Geoffrey 
of  Monmouth  places  him  between  Maelgwn  and  Cadvan  or  Cad- 
walla  as  king  of  Gwynedd.  I  have  attempted  to  reconcile  these  ac¬ 
counts  in  the  text. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


233 


Though  the  deep  indent  in  the  Yorkshire  shire  chap.  v. 
line  to  the  west  proves  how  vigorously  the  Deirans  The  strife 
had  pushed  up  the  river-valleys  into  the  moors,  it°fquerorsn' 
shows  that  they  had  been  arrested  by  the  pass  at  the  577I^17 
head  of  Ribblesdale;  while  further  to  the  south  the  Bc^fecf 
Roman  road  that  crossed  the  moors  from  York  to  Chester. 
Manchester  was  blocked  by  the  unconquered  fast¬ 
nesses  of  Elmet,  which  reached  away  to  the  yet  more 
difficult  fastnesses  of  the  Peak.  But  the  line  of  de¬ 
fence  was  broken  as  the  forces  of  /Ethelfrith  pushed 
over  the  moors  alonsr  Ribblesdale  into  our  Southern 

O 

Lancashire.  His  march  was  upon  Chester,  the  cap¬ 
ital  of  Gwynedd,  and  probably  the  refuge -place  of 
Eadwine.  From  the  first  the  position  of  Chester 
had  marked  it  out  as  of  military  and  political  impor¬ 
tance.  Once  masters  of  Central  Britain,  the  Romans 
had  sought  for  a  military  post  from  which  a  legion 
could  watch  alike  the  wild  tribes  of  our  Lancashire 
and  Lake  district,  and  the  yet  wilder  tribes  of  the 
present  North  Wales.  They  found  such  a  position 
at  a  point  where  the  Dee,  after  flowing  in  a  direct 
course  from  the  south,  bends  suddenly  westward,  and 
slants  thence  to  its  estuary  in  the  Irish  Sea.  Just 
at  this  turn  to  the  west  a  rise  of  red  sandstone  which 
abutted  on  the  river  along  its  northern  bank  offered 
a  site  for  a  town ;  and  it  was  on  this  site  that  the 
Roman  camp  was  established  which  grew  as  men 
gathered  round  it  into  the  city  of  Deva,  whose  other 
name  of  Castrum  Legionum  has  come  down  to  us 
in  the  form  of  Chester.  The  form  of  Deva  recalled 
its  military  origin.  The  town  was,  in  fact,  a  rough 
square  of  houses  through  which  the  road  from  Cum¬ 
bria,  entering  by  the  north  gate,  struck  to  the  bridge 


234 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

677-617. 


across  the  Dee  on  the  south,  while  in  the  very  cen¬ 
tre  of  the  place  the  line  of  this  road  was  crossed  at 
right  angles  by  the  road  from  Central  Britain  to 
Wales,  the  famous  Watling  Street,  which  came  over 
the  low  water-shed  of  the  Trent  and  entered  the  city 
by  its  eastern  gate.  Deva,  therefore,  not  only  held 
the  passage  over  the  Dee,  but  commanded  the  line 
of  communication  from  Central  Britain  to  both  the 
northwest  and  the  west ;  and  so  important  a  post 
was  naturally  guarded  by  fortifications  of  no  com¬ 
mon  order.  The  river,  indeed,  which,  after  passing 
the  city,  makes  a  fresh  bend  to  the  north,  furnished 
a  natural  line  of  defence  on  the  south  and  the  west 
of  the  town,  for  a  thin  strip  of  marsh  which  filled 
the  lower  ground  between  the  bridge  and  the  gate 
that  led  to  it  widened  on  the  west  into  a  broad  mo¬ 
rass  which  is  now  represented  by  the  meadows  of 
the  Rood-eye.1  On  the  east  and  the  north,  where  no 
such  natural  barrier  presented  itself,  the  site  of  the 
town  was  cut  off  from  the  general  level  of  the  sand¬ 
stone  rise  by  a  trench  hewn  deeply  in  the  soft  red 
rock,  over  which  still  tower  the  massive  walls  which, 
patched  and  changed  as  they  have  been  in  later  days, 
are  still  mainly  the  work  of  Rome.  At  the  news  of 
the  danger  of  Chester,  Brocmael,  the  Prince  of 
Powys,  marched  anew  from  his  home  at  Pengwyrn, 
the  after  Shrewsbury,  to  rescue  the  city  from  the 
Northumbrians,  as  he  had  rescued  it,  only  twenty 
years  before,  from  the  West  Saxons.  But  the  terror 
of  a  coming  doom  had  fallen  on  the  Britons.  Two 
thousand  monks  dwelt  some  miles  from  the  city  in 


See  Mr.  Freeman’s  map,  Norman  Conquest,  iv.  31 1. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


235 


one  of  those  vast  religious  settlements  which  charac-  charv. 
terized  Celtic  Christianity,  and,  after  a  three  days’  The  strife 
fast,  a  thousand  of  these  made  their  way  to  the  field  °fquerorsn 
to  pray  for  their  countrymen.  Avthelfrith  watched  57^17 
the  wild  gestures  of  the  monks  as  they  stood  apart  — 
from  the  host  with  arms  outstretched  in  prayer,  and 
bade  his  men  slay  them  in  the  coming  fight.  “  Bear 
they  arms  or  no,”  said  the  king,  “  they  fight  against 
us  when  they  cry  against  us  to  their  God."  Aban¬ 
doned  by  Brocmael,  who  fled  before  the  English  on¬ 
set,  the  monks  were  the  first  to  fall ;  but  the  heavy 
loss  sustained  by  the  Northumbrian  army  proved  the 
stubbornness  of  the  British  resistance.1  All,  how¬ 
ever,  was  in  vain,  and  the  victory  of  zEthelfrith  was 
followed  by  the  fall  of  Chester ;  while  the  district 
over  which  the  wasted  city  had  ruled — a  district 
which  seems  to  have  stretched  from  Nantwich  as 
far  as  the  Mersey  or  perhaps  the  Ribble — fell,  with 
the  city  itself,  into  the  hands  of  the  Northumbrians. 

The  battle  of  Chester  marked  a  fresh  step  forward  its  results 
in  the  struggle  with  the  Welsh.  By  their  victory  at 
Deorham  the  West  Saxons  had  cut  off  the  Britons 
of  Dyvnaint — of  our  Dorset,  Somerset,  Devon,  and 
Cornwall  —  from  the  general  body  of  their  race. 

What  remained  was  broken  anew  into  two  parts  by 
the  battle  of  Chester ;  for  the  conquest  of  Avthelfrith 
had  parted  the  Britons  of  what  we  now  call  Wales 
from  the  Britons  of  Cumbria  and  Strathclyde.  From 
this  moment,  therefore,  Britain  as  a  country  ceased 
to  exist.  No  general  resistance  of  the  Welsh  peo¬ 
ple  was  henceforth  possible,  and  the  warfare  of  Briton 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  2. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


236  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

against  Englishman  died  down  into  a  warfare  of 
separate  English  kingdoms  against  separate  British 
kingdoms — of  Northumbria  against  the  Cumbrians 
and  Strathclyde,  of  Mercia  against  the  Welsh  be¬ 
tween  Anglesea  and  the  British  Channel,  of  Wessex 
against  the  tract  which  stretches  from  Mendip  to 
the  Land's  End.  Nor  was  the  victory  of  less  impor¬ 
tance  to  England  itself.  With  it  the  Northumbrian 
kingdom  was  drawn  from  its  isolated  existence  be¬ 
yond  the  Humber.  Even  had  no  dynastic  interests 
forced  yEthelfrith,  as  they  were  soon  to  force  him, 
into  conflict  with  his  fellow  -  Englishmen  in  the 
south,  the  very  fact  that  he  was  brought  into  actual 
contact  with  them  would  have  made  new  relations 
inevitable.  Till  now  the  estuary  of  the  Humber  and 
the  huge  swamp  that  stretched  from  it  to  the  fast¬ 
nesses  of  Elmet  had  served  as  an  effectual  barrier 
between  Northumbria  and  Mid -Britain.  But  this 
barrier  was  turned  when  the  capture  of  Chester  and 
of  its  district  brought  the  Northumbrians  to  the 
west  of  what  had  till  now  been  the  “  English  March.” 
The  low  rise  which  forms  the  water-shed  between 
the  basins  of  the  Trent  and  the  Severn  was  a  far 
different  barrier  from  the  Humber  and  the  Fen ;  it 
is  so  insignificant,  indeed,  that  to  one  who  looks 
from  the  heights  of  Cranborne  Chase  the  great  cen¬ 
tral  plain  through  which  the  Trent  rolls  its  waters 
seems  to  bend  without  a  break  from  Yorkshire  round 
the  blue  mountains  of  the  Peak  through  the  plains 
of  Cheshire  to  the  sea.  That  the  Britons  had  held 
such  a  border  so  long  against  the  Mercians  shows 
the  stubbornness  of  their  defence  as  well,  perhaps, 
as  the  weakness  of  these  “  West-English  ”  assailants ; 


Stanford '*  C cograph {  Etta'oi 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


238 

chap.  v.  but  it  could  form  no  lasting  or  effective  barrier  be- 

The  strife  tween  Mid-Britain  and  the  great  Northern  kingdom 

^uerors!1  which  thus  found  itself  on  its  flank. 

577-617  Fresh,  indeed,  from  the  glory  of  his  victory  at 
~  ,  Chester,  Avthelfrith  could  not  fail  to  wake  to  new 

Fall  of 

Kent,  dreams  of  ambition  as  he  looked  to  the  south.  Wes- 
sex  seemed  weaker  than  ever.  A  new  king,  Cynegils, 
had  mounted  its  throne  on  Ceolwulf’s  death,  in  6 1 1 
but  the  strife  within  and  without  went  on  without  a 
check ;  and  in  the  very  year  after  the  fall  of  Ches¬ 
ter,  in  614,  a  Welsh  army,  as  we  have  seen,  in  union 
perhaps,  as  before,  with  the  Hwiccas,  succeeded  in 
penetrating  into  the  heart  of  the  West-Saxon  realm. 
They  were  defeated,  indeed,  at  Bampton,  in  the 
Cherwell  valley,  with  a  great  slaughter;  but  their  in¬ 
road  showed  that  if  the  Britons  were  no  match  for 
Northumbria,  they  were  still  strong  enough  and  bold 
enough  to  form  a  match  for  the  West  Saxons.  The 
power,  too,  that  had  risen  on  the  ruin  of  Wessex  had 
as  suddenly  collapsed.  The  supremacy  which  but  a 
few  years  before  Kent  had  wielded  over  all  Mid- 
Britain  between  Watling  Street  and  the  Humber 
had  shrivelled  in  the  later  days  of  /Ethelberht  into 
a  supremacy  over  the  East  Saxons  alone.  And  at 
/Ethelberht’s  death,  in  616,2  even  this  fragment  of  its 
older  empire  was  lost.  Saeberct  died  in  the  same 
year  as  his  overlord,  and  the  sons  of  King  Smberct 
threw  off  their  father’s  faith.  The  two  young  kings 
burst  into  the  church  at  London  where  Bishop  Mel- 
litus  was  saying  mass.  “  Why  don’t  you  give  us  that 
white  bread  which  you  gave  to  our  father  Saba  ?” 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  6 1 1 . 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  616 ;  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


239 


they  cried.  The  bishop  bade  them  first  be  baptized, 
but  they  refused  to  enter  the  font.  “We  have  no 
need  of  that,”  they  answered,  “  but  we  want  to  re¬ 
fresh  ourselves  with  that  bread  and  a  renewed  offer 
of  baptism  was  met  with  a  sulky  bidding  to  begone 
from  their  land,  since  he  would  not  hearken  to  them 
in  so  small  a  matter.1  The  rejection  of  the  new  faith 
was  a  sign  that  the  East  Saxons  had  thrown  off  their 
subjection  to  the  power  which  had  thrust  Christian¬ 
ity  on  them.  But  that  power  itself  seemed  bent  on 
throwing  off  the  new  faith;  for  when  Mellitus  crossed 
the  Thames,  he  found  even  Kent  in  the  throes  of  a 
religious  reaction.  ^Ethelberht’s  son  Eadbald  de- 
clared  himself  a  heathen,  and,  in  the  old  heathen 
fashion,  took  his  father’s  wife  for  his  own.  In  spite 
of  its  twenty  years’  continuance  in  the  land,  the  new 
faith  had  little  hold  on  the  Kentishmen ;  and  they 
followed  Eadbald  to  the  altar  of  Woden  as  they  had 
followed  /Ethelberht  to  the  altar  of  Christ.  Melli¬ 
tus,  with  Bishop  Justus  of  Rochester,  fled  over  to 
Gaul,  while  Laurentius  of  Canterbury,  who  was  pro¬ 
posing  to  follow  them,  spent  the  eve  of  his  departure 
in  the  Church  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul.2  A  dream, 
however,  in  which  the  first  appeared  to  him,  and 
scourged  him  for  his  cowardice,  drove  him  in  the 
morning  to  a  fresh  remonstrance  with  the  kinsr. 
The  marks  of  the  scourge,  and  the  wondrous  tale 
told  by  Laurentius,  did  their  work.  Eadbald  “  feared 
much,”  and  the  fear  was  strong  enough  to  again 
overturn  the  worship  of  Woden  and  restore  through¬ 
out  Kent  the  worship  of  Christ. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5. 


2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  6. 


240 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  v.  But,  isolated  as  it  had  become,  and  torn  as  it  must 
The  strife  have  been  with  this  religious  strife,  Kent  ceased  to 
°queiwsn  be  of  weight  in  English  politics.  Its  power  over 
57~7  Mid-Britain  had  passed,  as  we  have  seen,  to  East 
£  —  Anglia ;  and  it  was  along  the  bounds  of  Rsedwald’s 
overlordship  that  the  borders  of  the  Northumbrian 
kingdom  now  stretched  from  the  Humber  to  the 
headwaters  of  the  Trent.  A  collision  would  have 
been  inevitable  in  any  case,  but  it  was  hastened  by  the 
jealousy  with  which  .-Ethelfrith  followed  the  move¬ 
ments  of  the  House  of  /Ella.1 * * *  Of  /Ella's  children, 
the  elder  had  died  in  exile ;  and  his  son  Hereric, 
while  sheltered  at  the  court  of  the  British  king  Cer- 
dic,  after  the  battle  of  Chester,  was  removed  by  poi¬ 
son  in  6 1 5. 5  But  a  second  child  of  .Ella's  still  re¬ 
mained.  Eadwine  had  been  but  a  boy  three  years 


1  On  the  invasion  of  Deira  by  .-Ethelric  in  5S9,  two  sons  of  Hilla 
had  fled  front  their  fatherland  into  exile.  One  of  these,  whose 
name  is  lost,  must  have  already  reached  manhood,  for  in  the  early 
years  of  his  exile  he  became  the  father  of  Hereric.  whose  name  has 
been  preserved  to  us  through  the  sanctity  of  his  child.  Hild.  As 
we  hear  no  more  of  him.  this  elder  son  must  have  died  in  those 
years  of  wandering.  His  son  Hereric.  with  his  wife  Bregeswid  and 
their  two  children,  Hereswid.  who  afterwards  married  .-Ethelhere 
(Ba?da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23).  King  of  East  Anglia,  and  the  more  cele¬ 
brated  Hild,  who  founded  the  House  of  Whitby,  was,  in  Hild’s 

infancy  (.and  she  was  born  in  614),  “in  exile  with  Cerdic,  a  king 
of  the  Britons,”  and  was  then  poisoned.  Eadwine,  .-Ella's  other 
son,  must  have  been  much  younger  than  his  unnamed  brother;  he 
can,  in  fact,  have  been  little  older  than  his  nephew  Hereric,  for 
he  was  but  twenty -eight  when  Hereric,  already  a  father  of  two 
children,  was  murdered  (Ba'da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23:  Flor.  Wore.  ed. 

Thorpe,  vol.  i.  268).  It  is  noteworthy  that  one  daughter  of  .Ella. 

Acha,  who  remained  in  Deira,  became  .-Ethelfrith's  wife ;  a  mar¬ 
riage  clearly  intended  to  reconcile  the  Deirans  to  his  rule. 

5  "  Cum  vir  ejus  Hereric  exularet  sub  rege  Brittonum  Cerdice, 
ubi  ab  veneno  periit  ”  (Ba>da.  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


241 


old  when  his  house  was  driven  into  exile,  and  it  was 
only  at  Hereric’s  death  that  he  became  the  repre¬ 
sentative  of  the  kingly  stock  of  Deira.  While  his 
brother’s  line  found  shelter  among  the  Welsh,  he 
seems  to  have  sought  refuge  among  the  wild  fast¬ 
nesses  over  the  Mercian  border'  with  Cearl,  who  was 
at  that  time  King  of  the  Mercians.  Cearl  gave  the 
fugitive  his  daughter  Quaenburg  to  wife ;  and  two 
boys  were  born  of  this  marriage.1 2  But  even  from 
Mercia  Eadwine  was  at  last  driven,  doubtless  by  the 
pressure  of  his  Northumbrian  rival;  and  in  617  he 
appeared  at  the  court  of  the  East  Angles,  where 
Raedwald  gave  him  welcome  and  promises  of  se¬ 
curity. 

The  welcome  and  pledge  showed,  perhaps,  that  the 
East -Anglian  king  believed  war  with  the  North¬ 
umbrians  to  be  inevitable.  Eadwine’s  presence,  in¬ 
deed,  at  his  court  was  no  sooner  announced  in  the 
north  than  three  embassies  from  /Ethclfrith  followed 
in  quick  succession,  each  offering  gold  for  Eadwine’s 
murder,  or  threatening  war  if  his  life  were  spared.3  In 
spite  of  his  pledges,  greed  and  the  fear  of  war  seemed 


1  “  Cum  persequente  ilium  .Tidilfrido  per  diversa  occultus  loca 
vel  regna  multo  annorum  tempore  profugus  vagaretur,  tandem  ve- 
nit  ad  Radwaldum  ”  (Bada,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  12). 

2  “  Osfrid  et  Eadfrid,  filii  regis  ^Edwini,  qui  ambo  ei  exuli  nati  sunt 
de  Outenburga,  filia  Cearli  regis  Merciorum  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii. 
14).  The  boys  were  born,  therefore,  before  617,  when  Eadwine’s 
“exile’’  ceased;  and  in  633  Osfrid  was  old  enough  to  have  a  son, 
Yffi,  who  was  carried  off  to  Kent  with  the  children  of  Eadwine 
(Bada,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20).  But  as  Osfrid  is  called  “bellicosus  juve- 
nis”  when  he  fell  at  Hathfield  in  633,  he  may  well  have  been  some 
eighteen  years  old,  which  would  bring  his  birth  and  Ouanburg’s 
marriage  to  the  period  just  after  the  battle  of  Chester. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  12. 

16 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strifo 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Eadwine 

and 

Redwahi. 


242 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chatty,  to  shake  the  resolve  of  Raedwald;  and  lie  promised 
The  strife  the  envoys  either  to  slay  the  /Elling,  or  to  give  him 
q^ro«U  into  their  hands.  It  was  at  sunset  that  a  friend  of 
57T^si7  r^e  Gxile  who  had  learned  the  king's  will  called 
—  Eadwine  from  his  sleeping-chamber  to  warn  him  of 
the  danger  and  offer  him  guidance  to  a  fresh  lurk¬ 
ing-place.  The  noble  temper  of  one  who  was  des¬ 
tined  to  greatness  breathed  in  the  exile's  answer. 
“  I  cannot  do  this  thing,”  he  said ;  “  I  cannot  be  the 
.  first  to  treat  the  pledge  which  I  have  received  from 
so  great  a  king  as  a  thing  of  nought,  and  that  when 
he  has  done  me  no  wrong,  nor  shown  me  enmity. 
Better,  if  I  am  to  die."  he  ended,  in  words  that  told 
of  the  weariness  of  a  life  of  wandering: — “  better 
Raedwald  should  slay  me  than  some  meaner  man!" 
The  silence  of  the  night  gathered  round  Eadwine 
as  he  sat  where  his  friend  had  left  him  on  the  stone 
bench  at  the  door  of  the  king’s  court.  Suddenly  a 
man  drew  near  in  the  dusk,  and  asked  him  why  at 
that  hour,  when  others  slept,  he  alone  kept  watch 
through  the  night.  The  look  and  dress  of  the  man 
were  foreign  and  strange  to  him;  as  we  shall  see 
hereafter,  they  were  probably  those  of  a  Roman 
priest.  Paulinus,  who  had  come  northward  from 
Kent,  and  may  now  have  been  in  secret  communi¬ 
cation  with  Ra?dwald's  queen.  The  king  had  re¬ 
vealed  to  his  wife  his  purpose  of  betrayal,  but  her 
vehement  remonstrances  had  again  changed  his 
mood,  and  he  had  pledged  himself  afresh  to  defend 
the  exile.  The  keen-witted  Italian  knew  how  to 
make  market  of  the  news  he  had  learned.  Heedless 
of  the  first  haughty  repulse  of  his  greeting,  he  asked 
Eadwine  what  meed  he  would  give  to  one  who 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


243 


would  free  him  from  his  cares,  what  meed  to  one 
who  promised  that  he  should  live  to  surpass  in 
power  every  English  king  that  had  gone  before 
him?  The  thunder-struck  exile  promised  a  meed 
worthy  such  tidings.  “  And  what,”  went  on  the 
stranger,  “  if  he  who  foretold  this  could  show  thee 
better  rede  for  life  and  soul  than  any  of  thy  kin  ever 
heard !  wouldst  thou  hearken  to  his  rede  ?”  Eadwine 
gave  his  pledge ;  and  setting  his  hand  on  the  exile’s 
head  with  a  bidding  that  with  this  sign  he  would 
hereafter  claim  the  promise,  the  stranger  vanished 
so  rapidly  in  the  dusk  that  Eadwine  held  his  voice 
to  have  been  the  voice  of  a  spirit. 

It  is  possible  that  the  king’s  wavering  and  nego¬ 
tiation  had  been  little  more  than  a  blind  to  deceive 
yEthelfrith  while  the  East  English  were  gathering  to 
attack  him ;  for  the  refusal  to  surrender  Eadwine 
was  at  once  followed  by  the  march  of  Rmdwald’s 
army  to  the  Mercian  border.  The  sudden  attack 
took  Avthelfrith  by  surprise.  He  seems  to  have 
been  backing  his  threats  by  an  advance  with  a  small 
force  through  the  tangled  country  along  the  fen 
which  covered  the  valley  of  the  lower  Trent;  for  it 
was  here  that  Raedwald’s  army  attacked  him  as  it 
emerged  from  the  marshes  on  the  banks  of  the  Idle. 
The  encounter  was  a  memorable  one.  If  Wimble¬ 
don  was  the  first  recorded  fight  between  the  peoples 
of  the  conquerors,  the  fight  between  Raedwald  and 
Avthelfrith  was  the  first  combat  between  the  great 
powers  who  had  now  grouped  these  peoples  about 
them.  But  we  know  nothing  of  the  battle  itself.  It 
ended  in  a  victory  of  the  East-Anglian  king;  but 
only  a  snatch  of  northern  song — “  Foul  ran  Idle  with 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


Battle  of 
the  Idle. 


244 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  V. 

The  Strife 
of  the  Con¬ 
querors. 

577-617. 


the  blood  of  Englishmen  ” — has  preserved  the  mem¬ 
ory  of  the  day  when  the  little  stream  of  Idle  saw 
yEthelfrith’s  defeat  and  fall.' 


1  E.  Chron.  (Peterborough),  a.  617  ;  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  12.  Breda 
marks  the  spot  as  “  in  finibus  gentis  Merciorum  ”  (/.  e.  of  the  Mercia 
of  his  own  day),  “ad  orientalem  plagam  amnis  qui  vocatur  Idlre.” 
Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  (Arnold),  p.  56,  gives  the  proverb,  “  unde 
dicitur,  amnis  Idle  Anglorum  sanguine  sorduit.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


245 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  NORTHUMBRIAN  SUPREMACY. 

617-659. 

The  gathering  of  the  conquering  peoples  who  had 
encamped  on  the  soil  of  Britain  into  three  great 
kingdoms,  a  process  which  we  may  look  on  as  fairly 
completed  at  the  time  of  the  battle  of  the  Idle, 
seemed  the  natural  prelude  to  a  fusion  of  these 
kingdoms  themselves  into  a  single  England.  It  is, 
indeed,  the  effort  to  bring  about  this  union  that 
forms  the  history  of  the  English  people  for  the  next 
two  hundred  years,  and  that  gives  meaning  and  in¬ 
terest  to  what  Milton  scorned  as  “battles  of  kites 
and  crows” — the  long  struggles  of  Northumbrian, 
Mercian,  and  West-Saxon  kings  to  establish  their 
supremacy  over  the  general  mass  of  Englishmen.  In 
this  struggle  Northumbria  took  the  lead.  The  attack 
of  Aithelfrith  upon  Raedwald  was,  in  fact,  the  open¬ 
ing  of  such  a  contest.  But  its  issue  seemed  to  have 
been  fatal  to  any  projects  of  establishing  a  suprem¬ 
acy;  for  the  fall  of  /Ethelfrith  not  only  preserved 
the  independence  of  Mid-Britain,  but  it  broke  up  for 
the  moment  the  kingdom  which  his  sword  had  held 
together.  On  his  defeat,  Deira  rose  against  her  Ber- 
nician  masters,  and  again  called  the  line  of  /Ella,  in 
its  representative,  Eadwine,  to  its  throne.  Eadwine, 
however,  was  as  resolute  to  hold  the  two  realms  to- 


Eadwine 
in  North¬ 
umbria. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Elmet. 


246 

gether  as  yEthelfrith  had  been ;  and  he  was  no  sooner 
welcomed  back  by  his  people  of  Yorkshire  than  he 
marched  northward  to  make  the  whole  of  Northum¬ 
bria  his  own.  As  it  had  been  originally  created  by 
the  subjection  of  Deira  to  the  King  of  the  Berni- 
cians,  so  it  was  now  held  together  by  the  subjection 
of  Bernicia  to  the  King  of  the  Deirans.  The  march 
of  Eadwine  drove  /Ethelfrith’s  seven  sons  from  their 
father’s  realm ;  and,  followed  by  a  train  of  young 
thegns,  whose  exile  was  probably  the  result  of  a  fruit¬ 
less  struggle,  the  descendants  of  Ida  found  refuge 
over  the  Forth  among  the  Piets.1 

Nor  was  there  any  loss  of  strength  for  the  realm 
under  its  new  ruler.  Eadwine  was  in  the  prime  of 
life 2  when  he  mounted  the  throne,  and  the  work  of 
government  was  carried  on  with  as  ceaseless  an  en¬ 
ergy  as  that  of  /Ethelfrith  himself.  On  his  north¬ 
ern  border,  if  we  may  trust  a  tradition  drawn  from 
its  name,  Eadwine  crowned  a  hill  which  overlooks 
the  Firth  of  Forth  with  his  own  “  Eadwine’s  burh,” 
or  Edinburgh,  which  was  to  grow  from  a  mere  border 
post-  against  the  Piets  into  the  capital  of  a  northern 
kingdom.  But  it  was  not  in  the  north  or  in  the 
northwest  that  this  main  work  seems  to  have  been 
done.  To  the  Bernician  house  of  Ida,  the  most 
pressing  foes  would  be  the  Britons  of  Cumbria  and 
Strathclyde ;  but  to  the  Deiran  house  of  Ailla  the 
most  pressing  foes  were  the  Britons  of  Elmet.  York, 
and  not  Bamborough,  was  the  centre  of  Eadwine’s 
kingdom,  and  from  any  of  the  Roman  towers  which 
still  recall  the  older  glories  of  that  city,  the  young 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  1. 

!  He  must  have  been  at  his  accession  about  thirty  years  old. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


247 


king  could  see  rising  but  a  few  miles  off  to  the  west¬ 
ward  the  woodlands  and  moorlands  of  a  British 
realm.  The  kingdom  which  thus  fronted  Eadwine 
covered  no  small  space  of  the  present  Yorkshire. 
On  the  south  it  extended  to  the  fastnesses  of  the 
Peak,  where  the  Pecsetan  of  the  Middle  English  were 
still,  no  doubt,  pressing  slowly  up  the  valleys  of  the 
Derwent  and  the  Dove.  To  the  west  its  border  can 
hardly  have  run  in  any  other  line  than  along  the 
higher  moorlands  of  the  chain  that  parts  our  York¬ 
shire  from  our  Lancashire.  How  far  Elmet  extended 
to  the  north  we  have  nothing  to  tell  us ;  but  from 
the  character  of  the  ground  itself  we  may  fairly 
gather  that  the  later  forest  of  Knaresborough  formed 
a  portion  of  its  area,  and  that  it  extended  in  this  di¬ 
rection  as  far  as  the  upper  valleys  of  the  Wharfe 
and  the  Nidd.  Its  eastern  boundary,  which  is  more 
important  for  our  story,  can  luckily  be  fixed  with 
greater  precision ;  for  the  road  which  the  Roman 
engineers  drew  northward  from  their  bridge  over 
the  Don  at  Danum,  or  Doncaster,  and  which  bent 
in  a  shallow  curve  by  Castleford  and  by  Tadcaster 
to  York,  skirted  the  very  edge  of  the  forest  tract 
which  remained  in  possession  of  the  Britons.  Here 
Leeds  itself  preserves  the  name  of  Loidis,  by  which 
Elmet  seems  also  to  have  been  known,  while  Bar- 
wick  in  Elmet  shows  by  its  position  how  closely  the 
edge  of  the  British  kingdom  must  have  run  to  the 
Roman  road. 

The  kingdom  of  Elmet  then  answered,  roughly 
speaking,  to  the  present  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire ; 
but  no  contrast  can  be  imagined  more  complete  than 
the  contrast  between  the  district  of  to-day,  with  its 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Conquest 
of  Elmet. 


248 

huge  towns  and  busy  industries,  and  the  Elmet  of 
Eadwine’s  day.  The  bulk  of  its  area  must  then  have 
been,  as  it  remained  indeed  down  to  the  seventeenth 
century,  among  the  loneliest  and  most  desolate  parts 
of  Britain.  In  the  south  the  great  woodland  which 
covered  it  Ions;  remained  unchanged.  As  late  as 
Henry  the  Eighth’s  days,  Sir  Thomas  Wortley  could 
set  his  lodge  on  the  crag  of  Wharncliffe,  in  the  midst 
of  the  huge  oak  forest  through  which  the  Don,  here 
little  more  than  a  mountain  torrent,  hurries  down  to 
the  plain,  “  for  his  plesor  to  hear  the  harte’s  bell  ” 
amidst  the  stillness  of  the  woods.  More  to  the  north 
by  Wakefield,  the  priory  of  Nostell,  in  the  vale  of 
Calder,  tells  in  its  name  that  the  place  was  still  a 
North  Stall  of  foresters  in  the  woodland  when,  in  the 
days  of  the  Norman  kings,  a  royal  chaplain  gathered 
the  hermits  whom  he  found  dwelling  in  its  quiet 
glades  into  a  religious  house ;  while  along  the  skirts 
of  this  district  stretched  the  Barnsdale,  whose  “  merry 
greenwood  ”  gave  a  home  to  the  outlaws  and  broken 
men  of  Robin  Hood.  To  the  north  was  a  vast  reach 
of  bare  moorlands  scored  with  the  deep  and  grassy 
vales  of  the  Wharfe  and  the  Nidd,  while  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  kingdom  thickets  and  forests,  in  which 
the  last  wolf  ever  seen  in  Yorkshire  is  said  to  have 
been  killed  by  John  of  Gaunt,  formed  a  screen  for 
the  town  which  still,  after  so  many  changes  and 
chances,  preserves  its  original  British  name  of  Loidis, 
or  Leeds.1 

A  few  miles  to  the  northward,  indeed,  of  Leeds 
traces  have  been  found  of  Roman  iron-works,  but  all 


1  When  the  Cistercians  settled  at  Kirkstall,  close  to  Leeds,  in  the 
twelfth  century,  they  found  nothing  there  “prseter  ligna  et  lapides.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


249 


signs  of  industrial  life  had  probably  long  disappeared 
when  Eadwine  marched  from  York  for  the  conquest 
of  Elmet.1  His  immediate  ground  of  attack  was 
possibly  a  wish  to  avenge  the  poisoning  of  his  un¬ 
cle,  Hereric,  by  its  king,  Cerdic ;  but  we  know  noth¬ 
ing  of  the  winning  of  this  district  or  of  its  settle¬ 
ment.  On  the  very  edge  of  the  British  kingdom, 
however,  on  a  rise  of  ground  westward  of  the  road 
from  Castleford  to  Tadcaster,  we  find  what  is  prob¬ 
ably  a  memorial  of  this  conquest  in  the  group  of 
earthworks  at  Barwick  in  Elmet,  intrenchments  and 
ditches  enclosing  a  large  area  with  a  mound  in  its 
centre,  which  probably  marks  the  site  of  one  of  the 
burhs  or  fortified  houses  with  which  Eadwine  held 
down  the  country  he  had  subdued.  At  Leeds  itself, 
too,  the  king  seems  to  have  established  a  royal  vill, 
which  would  be  of  the  same  military  character;  while 
yet  further  to  the  westward,  in  the  upper  valley  of 
the  Calder,  where  no  “  Othere”  had  as  yet  settled  in 
the  “field”  of  the  coming  Huddersfield,  but  through 
which  a  solitary  track  struck  to  the  border  moor¬ 
lands,  we  may  perhaps  find  the  site  of  another  of 
Eadwine’s  dwellings  and  fortresses  beside  the  site 
of  the  ruins  of  Campodunum.' 


*  The  only  authority  for  the  date  of  this  conquest  is  Nennius,  cap. 
63:  “  Eoguin,  filius  Alii,  .  .  .  occupavit  Elmet,  et  expulit  Certic,  re¬ 
gent  illius  regionis.”  But  we  know  from  Bmda  that  Elmet  was  in 
Eadwine's  hands  before  his  death. 

2  After  his  conversion,  Eadwine  “  in  Campoduno,  ubi  tunc  villa 
regia  erat,  fecit  basilicam  ”  ( Bseda,  ii.  14).  (Htlfred’s  paraphrase, 
however,  gives  for  Campodunum  “  Donafelda,”  which  Gale  believes 
to  be  Tanfield  by  Ripon,  near  the  Swale.)  It  was  burned  after  Ead¬ 
wine’s  fall,  but  its  altar  was  preserved  in  Bseda’s  day  in  the  monas¬ 
tery  of  Abbot  Thrydulf,  “quod  est  in  silva  Elmete  ”  (ibid.);  and  in 
its  stead  “  pro  qua  reges  posteriores  fecere  sibi  villant  in  regione 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


250 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 

Conquest 
of  the 
south. 


But  in  such  a  region  we  naturally  find  scanty 
traces  of  English  settlement.  The  importance  of 
the  conquest,  indeed,  lay  not  so  much  in  its  addition 
of  long  ranges  of  moorland  and  woodland  to  Ead- 
wine’s  realm  as  in  its  clearing  away  the  barrier  which 
this  British  kingdom  interposed  between  Northum¬ 
bria  and  yEthelfrith's  conquests  to  the  south  of  the 
Ribble.  The  kingdom  of  Eadwine  thus  stretched 
without  a  break  from  the  eastern  to  the  western  sea, 
and  Chester  must  have  acquired  a  new  importance 
as  the  western  seaport  of  Eadwine’s  realm,  for  it  can 
only  have  been  in  the  harbor  of  Chester  that  the 
king  can  have  equipped  the  fleet  which  he  needed 
to  subdue  the  sites  of  Anglesea  and  Man.* 1  But  the 
conquest  of  Elmet  did  more  than  raise  Northumbria 
into  a  sea  power.  With  the  reduction  of  this  district, 
the  border  of  the  northern  kingdom  stretched  with¬ 
out  a  break  along  the  border  of  Mid-Britain,  and  the 
pressure  of  Eadwine  upon  the  Southern  Engle  be¬ 
came  irresistible.  Raedwald's  death  followed  imme¬ 
diately  after  his  victory  at  the  Idle,2  and  the  do¬ 
minion  he  had  built  up  may  have  fallen  to  pieces  in 
the  hands  of  his  son  Eorpwald ;  it  is,  at  any  rate, 
certain  that  before  the  close  of  his  reign  the  tribes 
of  the  Trent  valley3  had  come  to  own  the  supremacy 

quae  vocatur  Loidis”  (ibid.).  The  “  Elmedssetna,”  with  their  terri¬ 
tory  of  six  hundred  hides  mentioned  in  the  old  list  given  by  Kem¬ 
ble  (Saxons  in  England,  vol.  i.  p.  Si),  are  probably  the  settlers  in  El¬ 
met  after  its  conquest. 

1  “Mevanias  Brittonum  insulas,  quae  inter  Hiberniam  et  Brittan- 
niam  sitae  sunt,  Anglorum  subjecit  imperio”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5). 

2  Eorpwald  succeeded  him  in  617  (Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15;  see 
Hussey’s  note). 

3  Paulinus  baptized  “praesente  rege  Eadwine”  in  the  Trent  val¬ 
ley  at  Tiovulfingacaester ;  and  this  conversion  of  the  Lindsey  folk, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


251 


of  Eadwine.  It  was,  in  fact,  his  mastery  over  Mid- 
Britain  that  brought  the  Northumbrian  king  to 
the  borders  of  Wessex.  Eadwine  prepared  for  a 
struggle  with  this  last  rival  by  a  marriage  with  the 
daughter  of  the  Kentish  king,  Eadbald,  which  if  it 
did  not  imply  the  subjection  of  the  Kentish  king¬ 
dom,  in  any  case  bound  it  to  his  side.  In  the  sum¬ 
mer  of  625,*  1  the  priest  Paulinus  brought  Mithelburh 
or  Tate  to  the  Northumbrian  Court  at  York.  The 
marriage  was  taken  by  the  West  Saxons  as  a  signal 
of  the  coming  attack  ;  and  a  story  preserved  by 
Baeda  tells  something  of  the  fierceness  of  the  strug¬ 
gle  which  ended  in  the  subjection  of  the  conquerors 
of  Southern  Britain  to  the  supremacy  of  Northum¬ 
bria.  In  the  Easter  court  of  626, 5  which  he  held  in 
a  king’s  town  near  the  river  Derwent,  Eadwine  gave 
audience  to  Eumer,  an  envoy  of  the  West  Saxons. 
Eumer  brought  a  message  from  Cwichelm,  who  was 
now  joined  in  their  kingship  with  his  brother  Cyne- 
gils;  but  in  the  midst  of  the  conference  he  started  to 
his  feet,  drew  a  dagger  from  his  robe,  and  flung  him¬ 
self  on  the  Northumbrian  sovereign.  Lilia,  a  thegn 
of  the  royal  war  band,  threw  himself  between  Ead¬ 
wine  and  the  assassin ;  but  so  fell  was  the  stroke  that 
even  through  Lilia’s  body  the  dagger  still  reached  the 
king.  The  wound,  however,  was  slight,  and  Ead¬ 
wine  was  soon  able  to  avenge  it  by  marching  on 
the  West  Saxons  and  slaying  or  subduing  all  who 


with  the  establishment  of  a  bishop’s  see  at  Lincoln,  must  have  been 
brought  about  by  the  same  influence  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  1 6),  as 
well  as  the  conversion  of  the  East-Anglian  king  Eorpwald  (ibid, 
cap.  15). 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9. 


chap.  vr. 
The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9. 


252 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 
The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 

Eadwine' s 
rule. 


had  conspired  against  him.1  The  issue  of  such  a 
triumph  must  have  been  the  recognition  of  his  su¬ 
premacy  by  Cynegils  ;2  and  with  the  submission  of 
Cynegils  the  overlordship  of  Eadwine  practically 
stretched  over  the  whole  of  Britain. 

In  the  nine  eventful  years  which  had  passed  since 
he  mounted  his  father’s  throne,  Eadwine  had  thus 
gathered  the  whole  English  race  into  a  single  polit¬ 
ical  body.3  He  was  king  or  overlord  of  every  Eng¬ 
lish  kingdom,  save  of  Kent;  and  Kent  was  knit  to 
him  by  his  marriage  with  zEthelburh.  The  gath¬ 
ering  of  the  English  conquerors  into  the  three  great 
southern,  midland,  and  northern  groups,  which  had 
characterized  the  past  forty  years,  from  the  battle  of 
Deorham  to  the  battle  of  the  Idle,  seemed  to  have 
ended  in  their  gathering  into  a  single  people  in 
the  hand  of  Eadwine.  Under  Eadwine,  indeed,  the 
Greatness  of  Northumbria  reached  its  heiqht.  With- 
in  his  own  dominions  the  king  displayed  a  genius 
for  civil  government  which  shows  how  utterly  the 
mere  age  of  conquest  had  passed  away.  With  him 
began  an  English  proverb  often  applied  to  after- 
kings,  “  A  woman  with  her  babe  might  walk  scathe¬ 
less  from  sea  to  sea  in  Eadwine’s  days.”4  Peaceful 
communication  revived  along  the  deserted  highways ; 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  626  ;  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9. 

2  “  In  deditionem  recepit  ”  (Ba?da,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9). 

3  “  Ita  ut,  quod  nemo  Anglorum  ante  eum,  omnes  Brittanniie 

fines,  qua  vel  ipsorum  vel  Brittonum  provinciae  habitant,  sub  ditione 
acceperit”  (Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9).  “  Majore  potentia  cunctis  qui 

Brittanniam  incolunt,  Anglorum  pariter  et  Brittonum,  populis  prre- 
fuit  prreter  Cantuariis  tantum  ”  (Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5). 

4  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  16.  The  words  “from  sea  to  sea”  show 
that  this  order  was  not  confined  to  Eadwine’s  own  Deira,  but  ex¬ 
tended  over  his  newer  conquests  of  Elmet  and  the  Ribble  country. 


254 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  vi.  the  springs  by  the  roadside  were  marked  with  stakes, 
The  and  a  cup  was  set  beside  each  for  the  traveller’s 
briansu-  refreshment.  Some  faint  traditions  of  the  Roman 
premacy.  past  may  iiave  flung  their  glory  round  what  Brnda 
617-659.  ventures  to  call  this  “  Empire  of  the  English  some 
of  the  Roman  majesty  had,  at  any  rate,  come  back 
with  its  long-lost  peace.  Nor  is  it  without  signifi¬ 
cance  that  we  find  Eadwine’s  capital  established  at 
York.  A  hundred  years  had  passed  since  its  con¬ 
quest  by  the  Deirans  had  left  the  city  a  desolate 
ruin ;  but  its  natural  advantages  as  the  centre  of  a 
fertile  tract  and  as  the  highest  point  to  which  sea¬ 
traversing  boats  could  find  their  way  up  the  Ouse 
must  soon  have  begun  to  draw  population  again  to 
its  site.  We  do  not,  however,  hear  of  its  new  life 
till  we  find  Eadwine  established  at  York  as  his  cap¬ 
ital,1  and  the  choice  of  such  a  settlement  in  a  spot 
where  so  much  remained  to  tell  of  the  greatness  of 
Rome  can  hardly  have  failed  to  connect  itself  with 
the  imperial  dreams  which  were  stirring  in  the  mind 
of  Eadwine.  In  his  wide  rule  over  the  whole  of 
Britain,  Eadwine  seems  to  have  felt  himself  a  suc¬ 
cessor  to  its  Roman  masters.  A  standard  of  pur¬ 
ple  and  gold  floated  before  him  as  he  rode  through 
village  and  township,  while  a  feather-tuft  attached 
to  a  spear,  the  Roman  tufa,  was  borne  in  front  of 
him  as  he  walked  through  their  streets.'2 
Co  liven  ion  But  the  effort  for  a  political  unity  was  a  premature 

umbria.  effort.  Not  till  two  hundred  years  were  past  were 
the  English  peoples  to  be  really  gathered  into  a  sin¬ 
gle  realm.  Not  till  three  hundred  years  were  gone 


Boeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  14. 


5  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  16. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


255 


by  was  a  real  national  life  to  develop  itself  in  a  sin-  charvl 
o-le  England.  The  work  was,  indeed,  to  be  in  great  The 

&  0  ,,11  1  •  1  i.  Northum- 

measure  brought  about  by  the  very  agency  which  at  briansu- 
this  moment  came  to  wreck  the  work  of  Eadwine.  pre^cy- 
Though  Christianity  had  shrunk  back  since  the  61yJJ59 
death  of  /Ethelberht  within  the  bounds  of  the  Kent¬ 
ish  kingdom,  the  hope  of  carrying  out  Gregory’s 
wider  plans  of  conversion  had  never  been  abandon¬ 
ed  ;  and  in  the  marriage  of  /Ethelburh  with  Eadwine, 
Archbishop  Justus  saw  an  opening  for  attempting 
the  conquest  of  the  north.  The  new  queen  brought 
with  her  as  her  chaplain  Paulinus,  whom  we  have 
already  seen  in  East  Anglia.  He  had  been  conse¬ 
crated  as  Bishop  of  York  in  preparation  for  this 
journey  ;  and  his  tall,  stooping  form,  slender,  aquiline 
nose,  and  black  hair  falling  round  a  thin,  worn  face, 
were  long  remembered  in  the  north.  /Ethelburh's 
zeal  for  her  faith  reaped  its  reward  ;  for,  moved  by 
her  prayers,  Eadwine  promised  to  believe  in  her 
God  if  he  returned  successful  from  the  fight  with 
the  West  Saxons.  But  he  was  slow  to  redeem 
his  pledge.  Whether  the  fate  of  /Ethelberht  had 
warned  him  or  no,  he  spent  the  whole  winter  in  silent 
musing,1 * 3  till  Paulinus,  laying  his  hand  on  his  head, 
revealed  himself  as  the  stranger  who  had  promised 
Eadwine  deliverance  in  Rmdwald’s  court,  and  claim¬ 
ed  the  fulfilment  of  the  pledge  which  the  exile  had 
given."  Moved,  it  may  be,  by  the  appeal,  or  con¬ 
vinced  by  the  long  musings  of  the  winter-tide,  Ead¬ 
wine  declared  himself  a  Christian,  and  in  the  spring 


1  “Saepc  diu  solus  residens,  ore  quidem  tacito,  sed  in  intimis  cor¬ 

dis  multa  secum  conloquens”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  9). 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  12. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Its  results. 


256 

of  627  he  gathered  the  wise  men  of  Northumbria 
to  give  their  rede  on  the  faith  he  had  embraced. 
The  record  of  the  debate  which  followed  is  of  sin¬ 
gular  interest  as  revealing  the  sides  of  Christianity 
which  pressed  most  on  our  forefathers.  To  finer 
minds  its  charm  lay  then,  as  now,  in  the  light  it 
threw  on  the  darkness  which  encompassed  men’s 
lives  —  the  darkness  of  the  future  as  of  the  past. 
“  So  seems  the  life  of  man,  O  king,”  burst  forth  an 
aged  ealdorman,  “  as  a  sparrow’s  flight  through  the 
hall  when  one  is  sitting  at  meat  in  winter-tide,  with 
the  warm  fire  lighted  on  the  hearth,  but  the  icy 
rain-storm  without.  The  sparrow  flies  in  at  one 
door,  and  tarries  for  a  moment  in  the  light  and  heat 
of  the  hearth -fire,  and  then,  flying  forth  from  the 
other,  vanishes  into  the  darkness  whence  it  came. 
So  tarries  for  a  moment  the  life  of  man  in  our  sight ; 
but  what  is  before  it,  what  after  it,  we  know  not.  If 
this  new  teaching  tells  us  aught  certainly  of  these, 
let  us  follow  it.”  Coarser  argument  told  on  the 
crowd.  “  None  of  your  folk,  Eadwine,  have  wor¬ 
shipped  the  gods  more  busily  than  I,”  said  Coifi  the 
priest,  “  yet  there  are  many  more  favored  and  more 
fortunate.  Were  these  gods  good  for  anything,  they 
would  help  their  worshippers.”  Then,  leaping  on 
horseback,  he  hurled  a  spear  into  the  sacred  temple 
at  Godmanham,  and  with  the  rest  of  the  witan  em¬ 
braced  the  religion  of  the  king.1 

But  hardly  had  the  change  bean  made,  when  its 
issues  justified  the  king’s  long  hesitation.  Easily 
as  it  was  brought  about  in  Eadwine’s  court,  the  re- 


Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  13. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


257 


ligious  revolution  gave  a  shock  to  the  power  which 
he  had  built  up  in  Britain  at  large.  Though  Pauli- 
nus  baptized  among  the  Cheviots  as  on  the  Swale, 
it  was  only  in  Deira  that  the  Northumbrians  real¬ 
ly  followed  the  bidding  of  their  king.  If  Eadwine 
reared  anew  a  church  at  York,  no  church,  no  altar, 
rose  in  Bernicia  from  the  Forth  to  the  Tees.1  Nor 
was  the  new  faith  more  fortunate  in  the  subject 
kingdoms.  Lindsey,  indeed,  hearkened  to  the  preach¬ 
ing  of  Paulinus,2  and  Raedwald’s  son,  Eorpwald  of 
East  Anglia,  bent  to  baptism  soon  after  the  conver¬ 
sion  of  Eadwine.3  But  even  here  the  faith  of  Wo¬ 
den  and  Thunder  was  not  to  fall  without  a  struggle. 
Eorpwald  was  at  once  slain  by  a  pagan  thegn ;  and 
his  people  returned  to  their  old  heathendom.  Such 
a  rejection  of  the  faith  of  their  overlord  marks,  no 
doubt,  a  throwing -off  of  Eadwine’s  supremacy  by 
the  men  of  East  Anglia ;  and  thus  prepares  us  for 
the  revolution  which  must  have  taken  place  at  the 
same  moment  throughout  the  valley  of  the  Trent, 
and,  above  all,  among  the  West  Engle,  or  Mercians. 

Till  now  the  Mercians  had  in  no  wise  been  dis¬ 
tinguished  from  the  other  Engle  tribes.  Their  sta¬ 
tion,  indeed,  on  the  Welsh  border  had  invited  them 
to  widen  their  possessions  by  conquest  while  the 
rest  of  the  Anglian  peoples  of  Mid-Britain  were  shut 
off  from  any  chance  of  expansion ;  and  this  frontier 
position  must  have  kept  their  warlike  energy  at 
its  height.  But  nothing  had  yet  shown  in  them  a 


'  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  2. 

3  B;i‘da,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  16. 

3  Ba;da,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15.  For  the  date  of  Eorpwald’s  baptism, 
see  Hussey’s  note  in  his  Bicda,  p.  105. 

1 7 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


The 

Mercians. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 
The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617  659. 


Penda. 


258 

power  which  could  match  even  that  of  the  Engle 
on  the  eastern  coast.  It  was  only  at  the  close  of 
the  sixth  century,  indeed,  that  the  settlers  along  the 
march  had  drawn  together  into  a  kingdom ;  and  the 
bounds  of  the  Kentish  and  East-Anglian  overlord¬ 
ships  show  that  the  two  earliest  Mercian  kings, 
Crida  and  Wibba,  must  have  owned  the  supremacy 
of  Aithelberht,  and  bowed  beneath  the  supremacy 
of  Raedwald.  When  East  Anglia  fell  from  her  pride 
of  place  into  subjection  to  Eadwine,  we  can  hardly 
doubt  that  a  third  king,  Cearl,  who  seems  to  have 
seized  the  throne  in  spite  of  the  claims  of  Wibba’s 
son,  Penda,  submitted  with  small  reluctance  to  an 
overlord  who  had  wedded  his  daughter  while  in  ex¬ 
ile  at  his  court.  But  Quaenburg  and  Cearl  had  alike 
passed  away;  and  at  this  moment  the  old  relations 
of  friendship  between  Northumbria  and  these  West¬ 
ern  Engle  were  changed  into  an  attitude  of  mutual 
hostility  by  the  accession  of  Penda. 

It  was  in  626,  on  the  very  eve  of  Eadwine’s  con¬ 
version,  that  Penda,  the  son  of  Wibba,  became  king 
of  the  Mercians.1  Penda  was  already  a  man  fifty 
years  old,  and  famous  for  the  daring  of  his  raids 
on  the  neighbors  of  his  people  during  the  years  of 
his  exclusion  from  the  throne.2  He  seems  to  have 
seized  the  kingship  at  last  after  a  violent  struggle, 
in  which  the  sympathies,  if  not  the  actual  aid,  of  the 
Northumbrian  overlord  must,  from  his  ties  of  kin- 


1  Malmesbury,  Gesta  Regum,  i.  74.  According  to  Henry  of  Hun¬ 
tingdon,  Crida  was  the  first  Mercian  king.  On  his  death,  in  600,  he 
was  followed  by  Wibba  for  ten  years  to  610;  then  by  Cearl  from 
610  to  626 ;  then  by  Wibba’s  son,  Penda. 

2  Ibid. 


T^E  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


259 


dred,  have  been  with  Cearl  and  his  house.  With 
Penda’s  success,  therefore,  Eadwine  saw  himself 
fronted  by  a  formidable  foe  in  the  upper  Trent  val¬ 
ley.  But,  vigorous  as  the  new  Mercian  king  was, 
we  can  hardly  doubt  that  it  was  not  so  much  his 
visor  as  the  conversion  of  Eadwine  which  shook 
the  Northumbrian  power  over  Mid-Britain,  and  en¬ 
abled  Penda  at  once  to  seize  the  supremacy  over 
its  Engle  peoples.  His  efforts  would,  no  doubt,  be 
aided  by  the  tendency  of  these  peoples  themselves 
to  fall  back  on  their  older  grouping  in  the  days  of 
Raedwald,  if  not  of  /Ethelberht,  and  by  their  prefer¬ 
ence  of  a  South- H umbrian  to  a  North-Humbrian 
overlord.  But  whatever  was  the  cause  of  his  suc¬ 
cess,  he  must  have  already  asserted  his  superiority 
over  the  English  tribes  about  him  before  he  could 
have  ventured  to  attack  the  West  Saxons  as  he  at¬ 
tacked  them  only  two  years  after  his  accession,  in 
628.1  The  strife,  however,  of  the  West-Saxon  tribes 
among  themselves,  as  well  as  the  terrible  overthrow 
they  had  lately  suffered  at  the  hands  of  Eadwine,  fa¬ 
vored  their  assailant ;  and  their  defeat  at  Cirences¬ 
ter  seems  to  have  been  a  decisive  one.  The  local¬ 
ity  of  the  battle,  in  the  territory  not  of  the  original 
West-Saxon  kingdom,  but  of  the  Hwiccas,  who,  as 
we  have  seen,  still  remained  as  late  as  Ai thelberht’s 
days  a  separate  people  from  their  fellow-Gewissas, 
may  perhaps  explain  Penda’s  success,  if,  like  the 
Britons  at  Wodensbury,  he  fought  as  an  ally  of  the 
Hwiccas  against  Cynegils  and  Cwichelm.  The  strife, 
in  any  case,  ended  in  a  formal  treaty,2  whose  provi- 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  628. 

a  And  gethingodan  pa  (E.  Chron.  a.  628). 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum- 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617  659. 


2  6o 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


charvi.  sions  we  may  perhaps  guess  from  what  we  find  soon 
The  after  to  be  the  bounds  of  the  Mercian  rule.  In  the 
briansu-  days  of  Penda’s  son,  Wulfhere,  the  whole  territory 
premacy.  0f  t]ie  Hwiccas  had  become  part  of  the  Mercian 
617-659.  realm ;  and  there  is  no  recorded  event  by  which 
we  can  account  for  this  great  change  of  boundaries 
save  the  battle  of  Cirencester. 

P£adwiuf  Such  a  triumph  at  once  changed  the  political  as¬ 
pect  of  Britain.  Not  only  had  Mercia  risen  to  su¬ 
premacy  over  the  valley  of  the  Trent,  but  her  con¬ 
quest  had  carried  her  dominion  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Severn  and  added  to  her  realm  our  Worcestershire, 
our  Gloucestershire,  and  our  Herefordshire.  The 
West  Saxons,  stripped  of  Ceawlin’s  winnings,  not 
only  shrank  into  a  lesser  power,  but  necessarily 
passed  from  their  subjection  under  Eadwine  to  a 
virtual  submission  to  Penda.  The  Northumbrian 
king  was,  in  fact,  thrown  suddenly  back  across  the 
Humber;  and  the  work  of  his  earlier  years  was  un¬ 
done  at  a  blow.  But  Eadwine  was  far  from  relin¬ 
quishing  his  aims.  The  religion  he  had  embraced 
was  used  to  restore  his  shaken  power;  and  a  Bur¬ 
gundian  bishop,  Felix,  was  sent  by  his  brother-in- 
law,  the  Kentish  king,  to  again  attempt  the  conver¬ 
sion  of  the  East  Angles.1  Eadwine,  however,  had  a 
stronger  arrow  in  his  quiver.  Another  son  of  Rmd- 
wald,  Sigeberht,  had  been  driven  under  Eorpwald 
from  East  Anglia,  and  had  taken  refuge  among  the 
Franks  over-sea.  There  he  had  become  a  Christian; 
and  Eadwine  was  thus  enabled  to  bring  a  Christian 
king  of  their  own  stock  to  the  East  Anglians  in 


Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  26l 

63 1.1  The  reception  of  Sigeberht  involved  a  fresh  CHAP- VI- 
reception  of  Christianity,  and,  doubtless,  the  over-  The 
lordship  of  Northumbria  with  it.  But  the  winning  briansu- 
of  East  Anglia  made  a  war  with  Penda  inevitable.  premacy- 
East  Engle  and  West  Engle  had,  in  fact,  to  settle  617~659' 
which  should  be  supreme  over  their  fellow-peoples 
about  them,  and  around  which  should  be  built  up 
the  great  Engle  State  of  Mid-Britain.  And  beyond 
this  strife  lay  the  greater  struggle  which  was  to  de¬ 
cide  whether  the  Engle  of  Mid-Britain  could  hold 
their  own  against  the  Engle  of  the  north. 

In  such  a  strife  the  odds  were  heavy  against  Penda  and 
Penda,  had  he  waited  to  encounter  the  hosts  of  East 
Anglia  and  of  Northumbria  at  once.  To  crush  the 
northern  State,  and  then  deal  singly  with  his  rival 
in  Mid-Britain,  was  his  obvious  policy,  and  accounts 
for  his  choosing  the  part  of  assailant  in  the  coming 
struggle.  But  even  single-handed  Northumbria  was 
more  than  his  match,  and  he  could  hardly  have 
ventured  on  an  attack  on  Eadwine  had  he  not  found 
aid  in  the  people  which  had  till  now  been  the  special 
enemies  of  his  own  border- folk.  Cadwallon,  the 
Welsh  king  of  Gwynedd,  may  have  seen  in  Ead- 
wine’s  difficulties  a  chance  of  avenging  his  race  for 
the  conquest  of  Elmet,  as  well  as  of  winning  back 
the  country  which  yEthelfrith  had  reft  away;  and 
it  was  with  Cadwallon  that  Penda  leagued  himself 
against  their  common  foe.  The  absolute  severance 
between  conquerors  and  conquered,  which  had  played 
so  great  a  part  in  the  events  of  the  last  two  hundred 
years,  was,  as  we  have  seen,  fast  breaking  down. 


Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  1 5. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Battle  of 
Hatfield. 


262  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

The  union  of  Britons  with  the  Hwiccas  in  their  at¬ 
tack  on  Ceawlin,  the  home  which  the  House  of  zElla 
found  among  the  Welsh  of  Elmet,  as  well  as  the 
home  which  the  House  of  zEthelfrith  found  among 
the  Piets,  were  indications  that  the  Britons  would 
henceforth  look  for  help  in  their  struggle  to  divi¬ 
sions  among  the  Englishmen  themselves,  and  that 
Englishmen,  in  their  turn,  ivere  willing  to  seek  Brit¬ 
ish  aid  against  their  countrymen.  Penda  boldly 
recognized  this  fact  as  an  element  in  English  poli¬ 
tics,  when  his  host  marched  with  the  host  of  Cad- 
wallon  to  attack  the  Northumbrian  king.1  , — 

The  district  in  which  Eadwine  took  post  to  meet 
Penda’s  attack  was  on  the  northernmost  skirt  of 
that  vast  tract  of  fen-land  which  formed  a  natural 
barrier  for  Northumbria  against  any  assailant  from 
Mid-Britain.  Even  the  Roman  engineers  failed  to 
carry  a  causeway  directly  from  the  south  across  the 
marshes  of  the  Trent;  and  the  traveller  on  his  way 
to  Eburacum  was  forced  to  make  a  circuit  from 
Leicester  to  Lincoln,  and  to  cross  the  fen,  perhaps 
by  a  ferry,  in  the  neighborhood  of  Gainsborough, 
ere  he  could  reach  a  firmer  road  at  Bawtrey,  and 
strike  directly  for  the  north.  But  even  this  firmer 
road  was  little  more  than  a  strip  of  ground  hard 
pressed  between  forest  and  fen ;  for  on  one  side,  as 
we  have  seen,  it  was  closely  bordered  by  the  oak- 
w7oods  of  Elmet,  while  on  the  other  the  fen  stretched 
onward  without  a  break  from  the  course  of  the  Trent 
to  the  lower  channels  of  the  Don,  the  Aire,  the  Der¬ 
went,  and  the  Ouse.  And  not  only  was  this  gate- 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


263 

way  into  the  Northumbrian  territory  a  narrow  one, 
but  it  had  from  very  ancient  times  been  barred  by 
strong  defences.  The  British  tribe  of  the  Brigantes 
had  drawn  across  this  strip  of  land,  behind  the  upper 
course  of  the  Don,  so  strong  a  line  of  intrenchments 
that  they  seem  to  have  held,  for  a  time,  even  the 
Romans  in  check ;  and  this  work,  which  may  still 
be  traced  after  the  waste  of  a  thousand  years,  would, 
if  manned  by  the  soldiers  of  Eadwine,  have  been  too 
formidable  a  barrier  for  Penda  to  face.  To  right  or 
left,  however,  advance  was  scarcely  less  difficult ;  for 
it  would  have  been  hard  to  force  a  way  through  the 
southern  fastnesses  of  Elmet,  and  it  seemed  even 
harder  to  find  a  road  through  the  skirts  of  the  fen 
which  stretched  away  to  the  east.  It  was  into  the 
fen,  however,  that  Penda  plunged.  Its  wide  reaches 
of  mere  marsh  and  broad  pools  of  water  swarming 
with  eels  were  broken  by  lifts  of  slightly  higher 
ground,  covered  by  turf  which  rose  and  fell  (so  ran 
the  popular  belief)  with  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  rivers 
that  ran  through  the  district,  and  whose  soil  was  so 
soft  that  it  was  easy  to  thrust  a  pole  through  it  into 
the  waters  beneath.  The  rises,  however,  were  firm 
enough  to  afford  covert  for  vast  herds  of  deer,1  and  it 
was  from  one  such  rise  to  another  that  the  Mercian 
army  must  have  made  its  way  along  the  fen-tracks 
that  threaded  this  desolate  region.  Hatfield,  or  the 
Heathfield,  was  one  of  the  northernmost  of  these 


1  In  1609,  Prince  Henry  slew  five  hundred  deer  in  a  single  day’s 
hunting  here ;  and  before  the  draining  of  these  fens  in  the  Civil 
Wars  deer  were  said  to  be  as  plentiful  in  Hatfield  Chase  as  “sheep 
upon  a  hill.”  Smiles,  in  his  Lives  of  the  Engineers  (Brindley  and 
Early  Engineers,  chap,  ii.),  gives  an  account  of  this  drainage. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Its  results. 


264 

reaches  of  soppy  moor;  it  lay,  in  fact,  just  south  of 
the  Don ;  and  Eadwine,  crossing  that  river  by  the 
paved  ford  which  has  left  its  mark  on  the  name  of 
Stainford,  may  have  hoped  by  the  seizure  of  this  po¬ 
sition  to  crush  his  assailant  as  he  struggled  through 
the  pools  and  moor-paths  of  the  fen.  It  was  here, 
at  any  rate,  somewhere  near  the  present  town  of 
Hatfield,  that  the  two  armies  met;  but  in  the  fight 
which  followed  the  Deiran  king  was  defeated  and 
slain.1 

Eadwine’s  overthrow  proved  the  ruin  of  his  house. 
Of  his  elder  sons  by  the  Mercian  Ouaenburg,  one 
fell  on  the  field,  and  another  took  refuge  with  Penda; 
while  his  wife  /Ethelburh  fled  with  her  own  two 
younger  children  to  her  brother  in  Kent.2  With 
her  fled  Paulinus,  for  the  battle  was  at  once  followed 
by  a  revival  of  the  old  heathendom ;  and  Osric,  a  son 
of  Hflla’s  brother  Hilfric,  who  mounted  the  throne 
on  Eadwine’s  fall,  threw  off  Christianity  and  set  up 
again  the  faith  of  Woden.3  But  Osric  reigned  over 
Deira  alone ;  for  the  Englishmen  of  Bernicia  seized 
on  the  defeat  to  break  up  the  Northumbrian  realm 
by  throwing  off  the  overlordship  of  their  southern 
neighbors.  They  recalled  the  House  of  Ida;  and 
Eanfrith',  a  son  of  Hithelfrith,  returned  from  his  ref¬ 
uge  among  the  Piets  to  be  welcomed  as  their  king. 
Bernicia,  as  we  saw,  had  never  received  the  faith  of 
Eadwine ;  and  Eanfrith,  though  he  had  become  a 
Christian  at  Hii,  no  sooner  found  himself  among 
his  people  than,  like  Osric,  he  threw  off  the  faith  of 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20.  E.  Chron.  a.  633. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20. 

3  Ba:da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  1. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


265 

Christ.  The  reigns  of  the  two  kings  lasted  one  mis¬ 
erable  year — a  year  whose  shame  was  never  forgotten 
among  the  Englishmen  of  the  north.  Penda,  in¬ 
deed,  showed  no  inclination  to  follow  up  his  victory 
by  any  attack  on  Northumbria;  he  even  gave  shel¬ 
ter  to  one  of  Eadwine’s  sons,  when  he  was  driven 
out,  after  some  vain  struggle  perhaps  with  Osric  for 
the  Deiran  throne.1  His  aim  was  to  complete  his 
dominion  over  Mid-Britain ;  he  had,  in  fact,  fought 
with  Eadwine  only  to  isolate  East  Anglia ;  and  it 
was  East  Anglia  that  he  attacked  in  the  year  after 
the  battle  at  Hatfield,  in  634.  Before  the  threat  of 
his  attack,  King  Sigeberht  had  withdrawn  from  his 
throne  to  a  monastery.  His  people  dragged  him 
back,  however,  from  his  cell  as  Penda  approached, 
in  faith  that  his  presence  would  bring  them  the  fa¬ 
vor  of  Heaven;  but  though  the  monk-king  was  set  in 
the  forefront  of  the  host,  he  would  bear  no  weapon 
save  a  wand;  and  his  fall  was  followed  by  the  rout 
of  his  army  and  the  submission  of  his  kingdom.2  It 
remained  Christian,  indeed ;  for  his  brother  Anna, 
who  followed  him  on  the  throne,  was  as  zealous  for 
the  faith  as  Sigeberht;  but  Anna  only  reigned  as 
an  under-king,  and  East  Anglia  became  part  of  the 
overlordship  of  Penda. 

If  Penda  had  withdrawn,  however,  Cadwallon  re¬ 
mained  harrying  in  the  heart  of  Deira,  and  made 
himself  master  even  of  York.2  Osric  fell  in  an  at¬ 
tempt  to  recover  the  town ;  and  even  the  Bernician 


1  Basda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  18,  19. 

2  Basda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  1.  I  take  the  “oppido  municipio”  here  to 
be  York. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

6:7-659. 


Battle  of 
the 

Hevenfeld. 


266 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Eanfrith,  while  suing  for  peace,  was  murdered  by  the 
British  king.  But  the  triumph  of  the  Britons  was 
as  brief  as  it  was  strange.  Oswald,  a  second  son  of 
yEthelfrith,  left  Hii,  on  his  brother’s  death,  to  place 
himself  at  the  head  of  his  race ;  and  in  635  a  small 
force  gathered  round  the  new  king  near  the  Roman 
Wall.1  The  host  of  the  Bernicians  was  heathen,  as 
of  old,  and  of  Oswald’s  force  none  were  Christians 
save  twelve  nobles  who  had  followed  him  from  Hii, 
and  who,  like  himself,  had  been  converted  during 
their  exile.  But  Oswald  had  no  mind  to  cast  away 
his  faith  like  his  brother  Eanfrith.  On  the  night 
before  the  battle,  a  dream  came  to  his  aid.  He  saw 
the  tall  form  of  the  founder  of  Hii,  Columba,  shroud¬ 
ing  with  its  mantle  almost  the  whole  English  camp, 
while  his  mighty  voice  bade  the  king  “  Be  strong, 
and  do  like  a  man;  lo !  I  am  with  thee.”2  As  Os¬ 
wald  woke  he  gathered  his  witan  to  tell  them  the 
vision ;  and  with  the  quick  enthusiasm  of  a  moment 
of  peril  the  whole  host  pledged  itself  to  become 
Christian  if  it  conquered  in  the  fight.  Obedient  to 
the  counsel  Columba  had  given  him  in  his  dream, 
the  king  stole  out  from  his  camp  on  the  following 
night,  and  fell  with  the  dawn  on  the  host  of  Cad- 
wallon.  Legend  told  how  Oswald  set  up  a  cross  of 
wood  as  his  standard  ere  the  fight  began,3  holding 
it  with  his  own  hands  till  the  hollow  in  which  it 
was  fixed  was  filled  by  his  soldiers,  and  how  then, 
throwing  himself  on  his  knees,  the  king  cried  to  his 
host  to  pray  to  the  living  God.  They  rose  to  fall 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  2. 

2  Adamnan,  Life  of  Columba,  ed.  Reeves,  pp.  14-16. 

3  This  cross  was  still  standing  in  Baeda’s  time  (Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  2). 


i ford't  Utograph{  Kstab* 


268 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 
The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

6X7-659. 


Its  results. 


upon  the  Britons.  The  surprise  seems  to  have  been 
complete.  The  Welsh  were  cut  to  pieces.  Cad- 
wallon  fell  fighting  on  the  “  Heaven’s  field,”  as  after¬ 
times  called  the  field  of  battle ;  and  the  fall  of  this 
last  great  hero  of  the  British  race  left  the  English¬ 
men  of  Bernicia  supreme  in  the  north.1 

The  victory  of  the  Heaven-field,  indeed,  is  memor¬ 
able  as  the  close  of  the  last  rally  which  the  Britons 
ever  made  against  their  conquerors.  Through  more 
than  fifty  years,  from  the  battle  of  Faddiley  to  the 
fall  of  Cadwallon,  they  had  seemed  at  last  strong 
enough  to  turn  the  tide  of  victory.  In  the  south 
they  had  struck  down  Ceawlin  and  penetrated  to 
the  very  heart  of  Wessex.  In  Central  Britain  they 
had  long  held  the  Mercians  at  bay  even  along  the 
weak  frontier  of  the  water-shed  of  the  Trent.  Even 
in  the  north,  though  their  sti'ongest  combination  had 
been  crushed  at  Dasgsastan,  and  their  line  fatally 
broken  by  the  overthrow  of  Chester,  they  had  at 
last  succeeded  in  defeating  Eadwine,  in  breaking  up 
the  realm  of  Northumbria,  and  in  encamping  as  vic¬ 
tors  for  a  whole  year  on  its  soil.  But  with  the  bat¬ 
tle  of  the  Heaven-field  this  l'ally  came  to  an  end. 
The  strength  of  the  Welsh  was  exhausted ;  and 
henceforth  their  work  was  simply  a  long  struggle  of 
self-defence.  To  England  the  battle  was  of  even 
larger  import.  It  restored  in  great  part  the  political 
work  of  Eadwine;  for  Deira  submitted  to  /Ethelric’s 
grandson  as  it  had  submitted  to  /Ethelric,  and  the 
Northumbrian  kingdom  found  itself  restored  in  the 
firm  hands  of  Oswald.2  But  it  did  more  than  restore 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  635  ;  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  1. 

2  As  a  son  of  Eadwine’s  sister.  Acha,  Oswald  partly  shared  the 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


269 

his  religious  work.  The  conversion  of  the  Berni- 
cians  gave  Northumbria  a  religious  unity  such  as  it 
had  never  known  till  now,  and  with  this  unity  Chris¬ 
tianity  rose  to  a  yet  more  vigorous  life.  It  came,  in¬ 
deed,  in  a  different  form  from  the  Christianity  of 
Eadwine ;  for  it  was  not  the  Church  of  Paulinus 
which  had  nerved  Oswald  to  his  struggle  for  the 
cross,  or  which  carried  out  in  Bernicia  the  work  of 
Christianization  which  his  victory  began.  Paulinus, 
as  we  have  seen,  had  fled  southward  at  Eadwine’s 
fall ;  and  the  Roman  Church,  though  safely  estab¬ 
lished  in  Kent,  ceased  to  struggle  elsewhere  against 
the  heathen  reaction.  From  that  moment  its  place 
in  the  conversion  of  Northern  England  was  taken  by 
missionaries  from  a  land  which  was  henceforth  to 
play  a  part  in  English  history. 

A  Roman  general,  Agricola,  as  he  gazed  from  the 
western  coast  of  Britain  across  the  channel  which 
parted  the  two  countries,  had  planned,  as  the  last 
of  his  exploits,  the  conquest  of  Ireland.  But  the 
threat  of  Roman  invasion  was  never  carried  out; 
and  no  foreign  influence  disturbed,  till  a  far  later 
time,  the  social  and  political  development  of  the  Irish 
people.  In  this  way  the  tribal  life  which  the  Celts 
had  brought  with  them  from  the  plains  of  Asia  went 
on  in  Ireland  as  it  went  on  nowhere  else  in  the  West¬ 
ern  world.  Two  of  the  great  physical  agents,  indeed, 
which  brought  about  its  modification  elsewhere  were 
wanting,  or  all  but  wanting,  there.  In  other  lands 
mountain-ranges,  great  river-valleys,  a  varied  distri¬ 
bution  of  hill  and  plain,  tended  to  throw  smaller 

royal  blood  of  Deira,  and  would  thus  be  more  acceptable  to  the 
Deirans  than  his  father. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617  659. 


Ireland. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


2  70 

tribes  together  into  peoples  and  nations,  and  to  form 
from  their  union  a  corporate  organization  which 
widened  and  elevated  the  sphere  of  human  life  and 
human  action.  Within  the  tribe  itself,  on  the  other 
hand,  an  increase  in  the  culture  of  grain,  above  all  in 
the  culture  of  wheat,  did  much  to  fix  what  had  been 
a  mere  mass  of  wandering  herdsmen  to  particular 
spots,  to  make  land  rather  than  kinship  the  basis  of 
society,  to  turn  the  sept  into  a  village  community, 
and  thus  to  create  new  and  higher  types  of  social 
and  domestic  life.  But  the  form  and  climate  of  Ire¬ 
land  offered  almost  insuperable  obstacles  to  the  full 
development  of  either  of  these  processes  of  social 
growth.  Ireland  was  an  immense  plain,  set  indeed 
within  a  hilly  coast-line,  and  broken  by  the  course  of 
the  Shannon,  by  some  lakes  in  the  north,  and  by 
wide  tracts  of  bog-land  in  the  centre,  but  presenting 
over  a  vast  area  few  of  those  natural  features  which 
could  isolate  one  group  of  tribes  from  another.  On 
the  other  hand,  its  moist  climate  and  ceaseless  rain 
made  wheat-culture  uncertain  and  profitless,  while  it 
spread  before  the  herdsman  the  greenest  and  most 
tempting  of  pasture-lands.  Throughout  its  history, 
therefore,  the  island  remained  a  huge  grazing-ground. 
The  most  famous  of  the  older  Irish  tales  is  the  story 
of  a  cattle-raid ;  to  drive  off  kine,  indeed,  was  the 
main  aim  of  the  forays  of  tribe  upon  tribe.  In  Irish 
law,  fines,  dues,  rents,  were  all  paid  in  livestock,  and 
generally  in  kine.  Cattle  were,  in  fact,  to  a  very  late 
time,  the  chief  Irish  medium  of  exchange;  and  even 
at  the  opening  of  the  sixteenth  century  we  find  an 
Earl  of  Kildare  paying  twenty  cows  as  the  price  of 
a  book.  It  was  by  taking  a  grant,  not  as.  elsewhere 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


271 


of  land,  but  of  cattle,  that  the  free  tribesman  became  chap.vi. 
the  man  or  vassal  of  an  Irish  chief.  In  all  of  this  The 
we  have,  no  doubt,  indications  of  a  system  of  property  brUn  su." 
which  was  common  at  some  time  of  their  history  to  pi'emacy- 
every  Aryan  nation.  The  peculiarity  of  Ireland  lay  617-659. 
in  the  preservation  of  such  a  social  state  when  it  had 
passed  away  elsewhere  $  and  this  preservation  sprang 
from  the  nature  of  its  climate  and  its  soil. 

How  primitive  were  the  social  institutions  of  the  iuinstitu- 
country  may  be  seen  from  the  character  of  its  family 
life.  Of  polygamy,  indeed,  in  households  held  to¬ 
gether  by  the  despotic  power  of  the  father,  such  as 
existed  among  the  Celts  in  Gaul,  we  hear  nothing 
among  the  Celts  in  Ireland.  But  temporary  cohab¬ 
itation  remained  even  to  the  sixteenth  century  a 
recognized  social  usage,  though,  no  doubt,  an  excep¬ 
tional  one ;  while  provision  was  made  for  the  legiti¬ 
mization,  not  only  of  bastards,  but  of  a  wife’s  children 
by  other  fathers  than  her  husband.  It  was  from 
usages  such  as  these  that  domestic  life  rose  through¬ 
out  Europe  to  its  later  and  more  elevated  forms ; 
but  in  Ireland  the  evolution  was  so  slow  as  to  re¬ 
main  for  centuries  almost  imperceptible.  In  the 
same  way,  life  remained  wholly  pastoral  or  agricult¬ 
ural.  Among  the  native  tribes  no  approach  was 
made  to  collective  life  in  towns.  Though  the  Irish 
village  system  differed  little  in  form  from  the  system 
which  was  a  general  heritage  of  the  Aryan  race,  and 
which  we  have  seen  prevailing  among  our  English 
forefathers,  it  remained  based  more  on  community 
of  kindred  than  on  community  of  land.  Political  life 
showed  the  same  slowness  of  advance  as  social  life. 

In  the  earlier  Aryan  community,  the  chief  seems  to 


272 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^vi.  have  been  at  once  ruler,  priest,  and  judge.  In  Ire- 
ihe  land,  as  in  Gaul,  he  remained  simply  ruler,  while  the 
brian  su-  professional  lawmen,  or  brehons,  preserved  and  de- 
premacy.  ciarecj  the  mass  of  traditional  customs  which  consti- 
617-659.  tuted  Irish  law.  The  structure  of  the  nation  re¬ 
mained  purely  tribal  to  the  last  days  of  its  indepen¬ 
dence.  We  see,  indeed,  a  faint  tendency  to  union 
which  elsewhere  would  have  brought  about  a  real 
national  life.  Common  ties  of  descent  sometimes 
bound  tribes  in  confederacies  like  those  which  gath¬ 
ered  at  an  early  date  round  a  common  king  of 
Cashel ;  sometimes  weak  tribes  grouped  themselves 
round  stronger,  such  as  the  O’Neils  or  the  O’Donels 
at  a  later  date  in  the  north.  From  time  to  time 
even  the  promise  of  a  national  sovereignty  rose  out 
of  the  chaos  of  political  life ;  but  it  never  proved 
more  than  a  promise.  Traditional  feeling  owned 
the  right  to  a  general  overlordship  as  existing  in  de¬ 
scendants  of  the  House  of  Nial ;  legal  theory  gave 
this  King  of  Ireland  a  king’s  seat  at  Tara,  assigned 
to  him  Meath  as  his  special  domain,  and  asserted  his 
right  to  receive  tributes  of  cattle  from  lower  chief¬ 
tains.  But,  strong  as  was  the  hold  of  this  tradition, 
the  supremacy  of  the  King  of  Meath  never  became 
a  lasting  or  effective  force  in  Irish  history. 

Their  slow  The  result  of  this  peculiar  temper  of  the  Irish 
Zlmt.  people  was  fated  to  be  seen  long  ages  after  the  time 
we  have  reached  in  the  violent  contrast  which  Ire¬ 
land  presented  with  other  countries  of  the  Western 
world.  To  the  Europe  of  the  twelfth  or  the  six¬ 
teenth  century  the  island  appeared  simply  a  country 
of  uncivilized  barbarians.  But  neither  in  Irish  poli¬ 
tics  nor  in  Irish  society  was  there  anything  radically 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


2  73 


different  from  the  political  and  social  organization 
which  we  find  in  the  early  stages  of  other  European 
communities.  What  distinguished  Ireland  from 
other  nations  was  the  slowness  of  its  development 
as  compared  with  theirs.  Usages  which  elsewhere 
marked  a  remote  antiquity  lingered  on  here  into  his¬ 
toric  time.  The  brehon  of  the  thirteenth  century 
defined  the  law  which  applied  to  the  bastard  child 
of  a  married  woman  as  minutely  as  his  predecessor 
had  done  in  the  fifth.  Though  private  possession 
slowly  made  its  way,  the  system  of  common  posses¬ 
sion  lasted  up  to  the  age  of  the  Tudors  as  the  main 
social  feature  of  the  country,  and  then  was  only  vio¬ 
lently  put  an  end  to  by  the  English  lawyers.  Law 
went  on  in  a  customary  form  with  little  or  no  ten¬ 
dency  to  take  statutory  shape.  The  system  of  justice 
never  advanced  from  the  blood-fine,  which  was  origi¬ 
nally  common  in  all  early  races,  to  any  general  juris¬ 
diction  of  the  tribe.  Submission,  indeed,  even  to  the 
blood-fine,  as  to  any  form  of  judicial  interposition, 
remained  voluntary  to  the  last  among  Irish  dispu¬ 
tants  ;  and  it  was  only  by  a  complicated  system  of 
distress  that  they  could  be  forced  within  the  pale  of 
the  law.  It  was  the  same,  as  we  have  seen,  with  po¬ 
litical  life.  In  no  tribe  did  any  principle  of  real  co¬ 
hesion  develop  itself  which  could  serve  as  the  ground¬ 
work  of  national  union.  As  in  other  lands,  the  chief 
increased  in  power  as  time  went  on  by  the  creation 
of  a  class  of  vassals  out  of  free  tribesmen  who  sought 
or  were  forced  to  take  grants  of  cattle,  as  well  as 
from  the  settlement  of  refugees  from  one  tribe  with¬ 
in  the  boundaries  of  another.  But  to  the  last  the 
power  of  the  Irish  chieftains  remained  as  weak  for 

1 8 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


274 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 

Patrick. 


any  real  purposes  of  government  as  it  was  effective 
for  purposes  of  oppression.1 

At  the  time  when  the  first  Englishmen  invaded 
Britain,  the  Scots,  as  the  people  of  Ireland  were  then 
called,  were  among  the  most  formidable  assailants 
of  the  island.  In  the  raids  of  their  pirate  fleets  on 
its  shores  or  on  those  of  Gaul,  thousands  of  the 
wretched  provincials  were  swept  off  into  slavery. 
Among  these  captives  was  a  boy  whose  work  was 
destined  to  leave  a  deep  mark  on  the  history  and 
character  of  the  wild  tribesmen  who  carried  him 
from  his  native  land.  At  the  time  of  his  capture, 
Patricius,  or,  as  the  more  modern  form  of  his  name 
runs,  Patrick,2  was  nearly  sixteen  years  old ;  and  for 
ten  more  years  he  remained  in  Ireland  as  a  slave. 
The  years  were  years  of  conversion  to  a  deeper  sense 
of  heavenly  things.  As  he  tended  his  master’s  kine, 
the  young  herdsman  would  often  rise  before  daylight 
to  pray  in  woods  and  mountain,  even  amidst  frost 
and  snow ;  “  and  I  felt  no  ill,”  he  says,  “  nor  was  there 
any  sloth  within  me,  because,  as  I  see  now,  the  spirit 
was  burning  in  me.”3  At  last  a  dream  raised  in  him 
the  longing  for  freedom ;  he  fled  from  his  master’s 
hand ;  and  after  hard  wanderings  found  himself  at 
home  again.  But,  years  later,  he  was  driven  to  re¬ 
turn  to  the  land  of  his  slavery.  “  In  dead  of  night,” 
he  writes,  “  I  saw  a  man  coming  to  me  as  if  from 
Ireland,  whose  name  was  Victorinus,  and  who  bore 

1  For  the  social  condition  of  Ireland  in  these  early  times,  see  Sir 

Henry  Maine’s  Early  History  of  Institutions. 

3  For  a  full  criticism  of  the  materials  for  Patrick’s  life,  see  Dr. 
Todd’s  St.  Patrick. 

3  Confessio  S.  Patricii,  ap.  S.  Patricii  Opuscula,  ed.  Villanueva 
(Dublin,  1835),  p.  190. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


275 


countless  letters.  And  he  gave  me  one  of  them,  and  chap.  vi. 
I  read  the  beginning  of  it,  which  contained  the  words  The 
‘  The  voice  of  the  Irish.’  And  while  I  was  repeat-  briansu-" 
ing  the  words  of  this  beginning,  I  thought  I  heard  premacy~ 
the  voice  of  those  who  were  near  the  wood  Foclut,  617-659. 
which  is  nigh  to  the  western  sea ;  and  they  cried 
thus:  ‘We  pray  thee,  holy  youth,  to  come  and  live 
among  us  henceforth.’  And  I  was  greatly  pricked 
in  heart,  and  could  read  no  more.”1 

Patrick  woke  to  obey  the  words  of  his  dream.  Conversion 
He  was  ordained  priest  and  bishop,  and  again  land-  J  7  ' 

ed  on  the  shores  of  Ireland.  But  from  the  moment 
of  his  landing  his  life  is  lost  in  clouds  of  poetic  leg¬ 
end.  His  work,  however,  was  manfully  done.  By 
him  or  by  his  followers  the  island  was  quickly  won 
for  the  faith  of  Christ:  chieftains  were  converted, 
schools,  churches,  and  monasteries  were  set  up  in 
every  quarter.  But  the  form  which  the  new  com¬ 
munion  took  was  widely  different  from  that  which 
it  took  in  other  countries  of  the  West.  Elsewhere 
Christianity  had  been,  above  all,  the  religion  of  the 
Roman  Empire.  As  it  mastered  the  Roman  prov¬ 
inces,  its  organization  moulded  itself  on  the  organi¬ 
zation  of  the  State.  The  administrative  divisions  of 
the  one  became  the  ecclesiastical  divisions  of  the 
other.  The  prefect  and  vicar  of  the  Empire  were  re¬ 
flected  in  the  archbishop  and  bishop  of  the  Church. 

The  town  with  its  dependent  tract  of  country  be¬ 
came  the  diocese.  The  law-court  was  often  turned 
into  the  church.  Christianity  was  localized,  organized, 
with  officers,  law,  and  discipline  of  its  own,  working 


Confessio  S.  Patricii,  ibid.  p.  194. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Character 
of  the  Irish 
Church. 


276 

side  by  side  with  and  in  fixed  relation  to  the  civil 
organization  of  the  empire  which  adopted  it.  But 
in  Ireland  it  found  a  very  different  sphere  of  action. 
Ireland  had  never  formed  a  part  of  the  Empire ;  and, 
instead  of  the  centralized  system  of  Imperial  gov¬ 
ernment,  the  missionaries  found  there,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  mass  of  tribes  linked  together  only  by  force 
or  a  vague  tradition  into  varying  groups  around  a 
central  king ;  chieftains  whose  authority  was  per¬ 
sonal  over  their  clansmen  rather  than  territorial 
over  any  definite  tract  of  country ;  a  land  without 
towns  or  centres  of  civil  judicature,  or  more  than  a 
crude  though  minute  system  of  traditional  law. 

Little  as  we  know  of  the  first  Christian  mission¬ 
aries  in  Ireland,  we  see  from  its  results  that  their 
work  moulded  itself  with  a  curious  fidelity  on  the 
social  forms  which  the  island  offered.1  The  conver¬ 
sion  of  every  chieftain  was  followed  by  the  adhesion 
of  his  tribe,  and  a  tribal  character  was  given  from 
the  outset  to  the  nascent  Church.  The  monastic 
impulse  which  was  becoming  dominant  in  the  Chris¬ 
tian  world  at  the  time  told  nowhere  with  greater 
force.  The  Irish  churches  took  a  monastic  form; 
and  the  helpers  and  successors  of  Patrick  became 
from  the  first  abbots,  each  of  them  surrounded  by  a 
community  of  monks.  But  these  monastic  bodies 
were  only  centres  of  a  tribal  organization.  In  other 
countries  of  the  West,  endowments  of  land  fell  to  the 
local  churches  as  they  fell  to  guilds  and  voluntary 
civil  societies  of  a  similar  class,  and  these  endow¬ 
ments  set  them  in  the  same  rank  of  local  corpora- 


Todd,  Life  of  St.  Patrick,  Introd. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


2  77 


tions.  In  Ireland  the  grants  given  to  the  new  mon¬ 
asteries  and  their  superiors  raised  the  abbot  into 
the  head  of  an  artificial  clan.  He  and  his  successors 
were  not  only  heads  of  the  spiritual  community 
which  gathered  around  them  and  was  supported  by 
these  endowments,  but  chiefs  of  the  new  family  in 
its  civil  capacity,  and  its  bishops  in  a  more  spiritual 
aspect.  As  these  ecclesiastical  clans  grew  larger 
and  more  numerous,  their  form  modified  itself,  but 
still  in  the  same  peculiar  way.  Sometimes  the  suc¬ 
cessors  of  the  original  abbot  divided  his  lay  and 
spiritual  authority.  In  such  a  case  the  community 
owned  both  a  religious  and  a  secular  head.  The 
spiritual  coarb,  or  heir,  as  the  abbot  was  significantly 
called,  was  chosen  by  the  monks  over  whom  he  pre¬ 
sided,  and  the  secular  coarb  by  the  tribesmen  at 
large ;  though  in  both  instances  custom  tended  to 
restrict  the  choice  to  the  family  of  the  original 
founder.  The  office  of  bishop,  too,  generally  detached 
itself  from  that  of  abbot  and  sank  into  a  subordinate 
position.  Without  defined  diocese  or  territorial  po¬ 
sition,  the  Irish  bishops  were  at  last  distinguished 
from  the  rest  of  the  clergy  by  no  other  marks  than 
their  possession  of  the  strictly  spiritual  powers  of 
consecration.  Their  number  was  enormous.  Patrick 
was  said  to  have  consecrated  more  than  three  hun¬ 
dred,  and  a  few  centuries  later  they  were  believed 
to  have  reached  seven  hundred.  As  they  had  neither 
settled  dioceses  nor  settled  endowments,  their  life 
was  one  of  poverty  and  lowliness.  A  bishop  might 
be  found  ploughing  his  own  field  by  his  own  church. 
Another  might  be  seen  wandering  with  a  pet  cow 
at  his  heels  through  the  country,  without  support 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Character 
of  Irish 
Christian¬ 
ity. 


278 

save  from  the  fees  he  charged  for  ordination.  On 
the  other  hand,  abbots  of  great  monasteries  like 
those  of  Durrow  or  Clonmacnois  ranked  amona:  the 
great  powers  of  the  land.  Kings  quailed  before  their 
spiritual  threats  ;  they  formed  political  combinations, 
and  at  need  led  kinsfolk  or  tribesmen  to  the  field. 

While  other  churches  of  Western  Christendom 
were  organized  on  a  national  and  episcopal  basis,  the 
Irish  Church  was  thus  at  once  tribal  and  monastic. 
Nor  was  it  less  different  from  them  in  character  than 
in  form.  In  its  temper  as  in  its  organization  it  was 
purely  Celtic.  The  work  of  its  conversion  was  hard¬ 
ly  over  when  the  conquest  of  Britain  by  the  English 
cut  off  Ireland  from  the  Western  world,  and  hindered 
the  new  community  of  religion  from  bringing  it  into 
contact  with  the  general  temper  of  European  civil¬ 
ization.  Save  the  little  group  of  its  first  mission¬ 
aries,  even  its  earliest  preachers  were  pure  Irishmen, 
and  the  Church  they  founded  grew  up  purely  Irish 
in  spirit  as  in  form.  The  Celtic  passion,  like  the 
Celtic  anarchy,  stamped  itself  on  Irish  religion. 
There  was  something  strangely  picturesque  in  its 
asceticism,  in  its  terrible  penances,  its  life-long  fasts, 
its  sudden  contrasts  of  wrath  and  pity,  the  sweet¬ 
ness  and  tenderness  of  its  legends  and  hymns,  the 
awful  vindictiveness  of  its  curses.  But,  in  good  as 
in  ill,  its  type  of  moral  conduct  was  utterly  unlike 
that  which  Christianity  elsewhere  developed.  It 
was  wanting  in  moral  earnestness,  in  the  sense  of 
human  dignity,  in  self-command;  it  showed  little 
power  over  the  passions  of  anger  and  revenge ;  it 
recognized  spiritual  excellence  in  a  rigid  abstinence 
from  sensual  excess  and  the  repetition  of  countless 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


279 


hymns  and  countless  litanies.  But,  on  the  other  chap.  vi. 
hand,  Ireland  gave  to  Christianity  a  force,  a  pas-  The 
sionateness,  a  restless  energy,  such  as  it  had  never  brianSu. 
known  before.  It  threw  around  it  something  of  the  premacy- 
grace,  the  witchery,  the  romance  of  the  Irish  tern-  617  659- 
per.  It  colored  even  its  tenderness  with  the  peculiar 
pathos  of  the  Celt. 

The  extravagance  of  the  Irish  saint- legends  is  it* poetry. 
broken  everywhere  by  gleams  of  a  delicate  evanes¬ 
cent  poetry.  When  the  host  of  King  Loegaire  closes 
round  Patrick  to  kill  him  and  his  comrades,  the  eight 
missionaries  vanish  with  the  boy  who  followed  them, 
and  the  host  sees  but  eight  roe-deer  and  a  fawn  trip¬ 
ping  away  to  pasture.  At  another  time  two  of  the 
king’s  daughters,  Fedelm  the  Red  and  Ethne  the 
White,  come  down  to  a  river-side  to  wash,  after  the 
manner  of  women,  and  find  there  the  group  of  wan¬ 
dering  preachers.1  “  They  knew  not  whence  they 
came  nor  from  what  people,  but  took  them  for  fairy- 
folk  of  the  hills  or  earth,  gods  or  phantoms.”  Patrick 
taught  them  his  faith  and  baptized  them ;  but  his 
words  woke  a  strange  longing  in  the  girls’  hearts, 
and  they  asked  to  see  the  face  of  Christ.  “  And 
Patrick  said, ‘Ye  cannot  see  the  face  of  Christ  save 
ye  taste  of  death  and  take  the  sacrifice  of  the  Lord.’ 

Then  they  bade  him  give  it  them.  And  they  re¬ 
ceived  God’s  eucharist,  and  slept  in  death  ;  and  they 
were  laid  out  both  in  one  bed  covered  with  their 
garments,  and  men  made  great  dole  and  weeping 
over  them.”  It  is  this  peculiar  tenderness  that  gives 
its  charm  to  the  love  of  living:  things  that  colors  the 

O  O 


Extract  from  Book  of  Armagh,  in  Todd's  St.  Patrick,  p.  452. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617  659. 


Irish  mis¬ 
sions. 


280  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

legends  of  Celtic  saints.  The  Irish  hermit  talks  with 
the  sea-birds  which  scream  round  his  strip  of  sand¬ 
bank.  Columba  sits  watching  his  reapers  In  the  field, 
and  caressing  the  head  which  a  horse  that  had  been 
feeding  hard  by  comes  to  thrust  into  his  lap.1  The 
legend  of  Patrick  linked  an  instance  of  his  charity 
to  animals  with  the  foundation  of  Armagh.  When 
he  came  to  the  spot  he  had  chosen  for  his  settle¬ 
ment,  he  found  a  roe  with  her  fawn  lying  in  the 
place  where  the  altar  of  his  church  was  afterwards 
to  stand.  His  followers  would  have  slain  them, “but 
Patrick  would  not.”  He  took  up  the  fawn  himself, 
carrying  it  on  his  shoulder;  and  the  roe  followed 
him  like  a  pet  lamb  till  he  had  laid  down  her  fawn 
in  another  field. 

It  was  this  strange  Christianity,  strange  alike  in 
temper  and  in  form,  which  began  in  the  seventh 
century  to  leaven  in  a  hundred  different  ways  the 
Christianity  of  the  West.  When  it  burst  upon  West¬ 
ern  Christendom,  it  brought  with  it  an  enthusiasm, 
an  energy,  a  learning,  greater  than  any  that  it  found 
there.  For  while  in  Italy  or  Gaul  or  Spain  Chris¬ 
tianity  had  spent  its  vigor  in  a  struggle  for  self- 
preservation  against  the  heathen  invaders — in  win¬ 
ning  them  to  its  creed,  in  taming  them  by  its  disci¬ 
pline,  in  bringing  to  bear  on  them  the  civilization 
which  it  had  alone  preserved  through  the  storm  of 
conquest — Ireland,  unscourged  by  assailants,  drew 
from  its  conversion  a  life  and  movement  such  as  it 
has  never  known  since.  The  science  and  Biblical 
knowledge  which  fled  from  the  Continent  took  refuge 


1  Adamnan,  Life  of  Columba,  ed.  Reeves,  p.  231. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


28l 


in  famous  schools  which  made  Durrow  and  Armasrh  chap.  vr. 
universities  of  the  West.  The  new  Christian  life  The 
soon  beat  too  strongly  to  brook  confinement  within  brHn  su" 
the  bounds  of  Ireland  itself.  Patrick  had  not  been  premacy- 
a  century  dead  when  Irish  Christianity  flung  itself  en-659. 
with  a  fiery  zeal  into  battle  with  the  mass  of  heathen¬ 
ism  which  was  rolling  in  elsewhere  upon  the  Chris¬ 
tian  world.  Irish  missionaries  labored  among  the 
Piets  of  the  Highlands  and  among  the  Frisians  of 
the  northern  seas.  An  Irish  missionary,  Columban, 
founded  monasteries  in  Burgundy  and  the  Apen¬ 
nines.  The  canton  of  St.  Gall  still  commemorates 
in  its  name  another  Irish  missionary  before  whom 
the  spirits  of  flood  and  fell  fled  wailing  over  the 
waters  of  the  Lake  of  Constance.  For  a  time  it 
seemed  as  if  the  course  of  the  world’s  history  was 
to  be  changed ;  as  if  the  older  Celtic  race  that  Ro¬ 
man  and  German  had  driven  before  them  had 
turned  to  the  moral  conquest  of  their  conquerors ; 
as  if  Celtic,  and  not  Latin,  Christianity  was  to  mould 
the  destinies  of  the  churches  of  the  West. 

On  a  low  island  of  barren  gneiss  rock  off  the  west  inshmis- 
coast  of  Scotland  the  Irishman  Colum  or  Columba  in  North- 
set  up  a  mission  station  for  the  Piets  at  Hii;1  and  it 
was  within  the  walls  of  this  monastery  that  Oswald, 
with  his  brothers,  had  found  refuge  on  their  father’s 
fall.2  As  soon  as  he  was  master  of  Northumbria, 
he  naturally  called  for  missionaries  from  among  its 
monks.  The  first  preacher  sent  in  answer  to  his 
call  obtained  small  success :  he  declared,  indeed,  on 
his  return,  that  among  a  people  so  stubborn  and 


1  Adamnan,  Life  of  Columba,  ed.  Reeves,  p.  434. 
3  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  3. 


282 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

017  659. 


barbarous  as  these  Northumbrian  folk  success  was 
impossible.  “  Was  it  their  stubbornness,  or  your 
harshness?”  asked  Aidan,  a  brother  sitting  by;  “did 
you  forget  God’s  word  to  give  them  the  milk  first  and 
then  the  meat?”1  All  eyes  turned  on  the  speaker 
as  fittest  to  undertake  the  abandoned  mission,  and 
Aidan,  sailing  at  their  bidding,  fixed  his  bishop’s  stool 
or  see  in  635  on  the  coast  of  Northumbria,  in  the 
island -peninsula  of  Lindisfarne.1  Thence,  from  a 
monastery  which  gave  to  the  spot  its  after-name  of 
Holy  Island,  preachers  poured  forth  over  the  heathen 
realm.  Boisil  guided  a  little  troop  of  missionaries  to 
the  valley  of  the  Tweed.  Aidan  himself  wandered 
on  foot,  preaching  among  the  peasants  of  Bernicia. 
In  his  own  court  the  king  acted  as  interpreter  to 
the  Irish  missionaries  in  their  efforts  to  convert  his 
thegns.8  A  new  conception  of  kingship,  indeed,  be¬ 
gan  to  blend  itself  with  that  of  the  warlike  glory  of 
yEthelfrith  or  the  wise  administration  of  Eadwine, 
and  the  moral  power  which  was  to  reach  its  height 
in  Avlfred  first  dawns  in  the  story  of  Oswald.  For 
after-times,  the  memory  of  Oswald’s  greatness  was 
lost  in  the  memory  of  his  piety.  “  By  reason  of  his 
constant  habit  of  praying  or  giving  thanks  to  the 
Lord,  he  was  wont  wherever  he  sat  to  hold  his  hands 
upturned  on  his  knees.”4  As  he  feasted  with  Bishop 
Aidan  by  his  side,  the  thegn  whom  he  had  set  to 
give  alms  to  the  poor  at  his  gate  told  him  of  a  mul¬ 
titude  that  waited  fasting  without.  The  king  at 
once  bade  the  untasted  meat  be  carried  to  the  poor, 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  5.  The  name  in  Irish  form  is  Aedhan. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  3.  3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  3. 

4  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  12. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  283 

and  his  silver  dish  be  divided  piecemeal  among  them. 
Aidan  seized  the  royal  hand  and  blessed  it.  “  May 
this  hand,”  he  cried,  “  never  grow  old  l”1 

But  if  Oswald  was  a  saint,  he  was  none  the  less 
resolved  to  build  up  again  a  power  such  as  that  of 
Eadwine.  His  earlier  efforts  to  widen  his  dominion 
seem  to  have  been  mainly  in  the  northwest.  Here 
his  sway  not  only  stretched  over  the  Britons,  who 
formed  the  mass  of  the  population  in  the  district 
between  Chester  and  the  Ribble,  but  it  is  probable 
that  he  was  owned  as  overlord  by  the  Welsh  king¬ 
dom  of  Strathclyde ;  for  otherwise  he  could  hardly 
have  gone  on  to  “receive  into  his  lordship”2  the 
Piets  and  the  Dalriad  Scots  across  the  Forth.  In 
Southern  Britain  his  success  seems  to  have  been 
more  checkered.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  Mercia 
or  the  tribes  along  the  Trent  yielded  more  than  a 
nominal  submission  to  him;3  but  Penda  must  have 
shrunk  for  the  while  from  any  open  struggle,  for  at 
the  pressure  of  Oswald4 5  he  murdered  Eadfrid,  the 
second  son  of  Eadwine  by  his  Mercian  wife  Oueen- 
burg,  who  had  for  a  while  found  refuge  at  his  court. 
Kent,  too,  yielded  to  the  same  pressure,  and  drove 
Eadwine’s  children  by  SEthelberga  to  a  refuge  in 
Gaul.6  In  these  realms,  however,  Oswald  could  hard- 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  6. 

2  “Omnes  nationes  et  provincias  Brittanniae,  quae  in  quatuor 
linguas,  id  est :  Brittonum,  Pictorum,  Scottorum,  et  Anglorum,  di- 
visae  sunt,  in  ditione  accepit”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  6). 

3  Some  submission  there  must  have  been,  for  Baeda  says  that 
Oswald  “  hisdem  finibus  regnum  tenuit  ”  as  Eadwine,  which  he  has 
carefully  specified  (Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5). 

4  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20. 

5  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20. 


CHAr.  VI. 
The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 

Oswald. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Battle  of 
the  Maser- 
feld. 


284 

ly  claim  any  direct  overlordship,  but  elsewhere  he 
was  able  to  restore  the  realm  of  Eadwine.  His  arms 
wrested  an  acknowledgment  of  subjection  from  the 
Lindiswara,  after  a  struggle  whose  fierceness  wras 
shown  by  the  bitter  memory  it  left  behind  it  among 
the  conquered  people.1  East  Anglia,  which  had  re¬ 
mained  Christian  amidst  the  heathen  reaction  else¬ 
where,  after  the  fall  of  Eadwine,  seems  still  to  have 
remained  subject  to  Penda ;  but  in  the  south  Oswald 
succeeded  in  effectually  restoring  the  Northumbrian 
supremacy.  The  battle  of  Cirencester  and  the  loss 
of  the  country  of  the  Hwiccas  had  taught  the  West 
Saxons  to  look  on  Mercia  as  their  most  dangerous 
foe ;  and  they  were  ready  to  seek  aid  against  it  in 
recognizing  the  overlordship  of  Oswald.  Here  again 
the  new  religion  served  as  a  prelude  to  the  North¬ 
umbrian  advance.  Immediately  after  the  victory 
of  the  Hevenfekl,  in  635,  Wessex  declared  itself 
Christian.  The  work  of  a  preacher,  Birinus,  who 
had  penetrated  from  Gaul  into  Wessex,  proved  so 
effective  that  King  Cynegils  received  baptism  in 
Oswald's  presence,  and  established  with  his  assent  a 
see  for  his  people  in  the  royal  city  of  Dorchester  on 
the  Thames.2 

It  was  this  supremacy  over  so  wide  a  ring  of  sub¬ 
ject  peoples  which  seemed  to  lift  Oswald  out  of  the 
rank  of  kings.  In  him,  even  more  than  in  Eadwine, 
men  saw  some  faint  likeness  of  the  older  emperors. 
Once,  indeed,  a  writer  from  the  land  of  the  Piets,  the 
abbot  Adamnan  of  Hii,  calls  Oswald  “  Emperor  of 
the  whole  of  Britain.”3  But,  great  as  he  was,  the 

1  Baida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  n.  2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7. 

3  Adamnan’s  Life  of  Columba,  ed.  Reeves,  p.  16. 


iforiTi  Geograph {  EtiaO* 


286 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


doom  of  Oswald  was  fated  to  be  that  of  Eadwine. 
Though  the  conversion  of  Wessex  had  prisoned  it 
within  the  central  districts  of  England,  heathendom 
fought  desperately  for  life.  Penda  remained  its 
rallying  -  point ;  and  the  long  reign  of  the  Mercian 
king  was,  in  fact,  one  continuous  battle  with  the 
Cross.  But  so  far  as  we  can  judge  from  his  acts, 
Penda  seems  to  have  looked  on  the  strife  of  religion 

O 

in  a  purely  political  light.  Christianity  meant,  in 
fact,  either  subjection  to,  or  alliance  with,  Oswald ; 
and  the  Northumbrian  supremacy  was  again  threat¬ 
ening  his  dominion  on  almost  every  border  when 
Penda  resolved  to  break  through  the  net  which  was 
closing  round  him.  The  point  of  conflict,  as  before, 
seems  to  have  been  the  dominion  over  East  Anglia. 
Its  possession  was  as  vital  to  Mid-Britain  as  it  was  to 
Northumbria,  which  needed  it  to  link  itself  with  its 
West- Saxon  subjects  in  the  south;  and  Oswald 
must  have  felt  that  he  was  challenging  his  rival  to  a 
decisive  combat  when  he  marched,  in  642,  to  deliver 
the  East  Anglians  from  Penda.  But  his  doom  was 
that  of  Eadwine ;  for  he  was  overthrown  and  slain 
in  a  battle  called  the  battle  of  the  Maserfeld.1  His 
last  words  showed  how  deeply  the  spirit  of  the  new 
faith  was  telling  on  the  temper  of  Englishmen.  The 
last  thought  of  every  northern  warrior  as  he  fell  had 
till  now  been  a  hope  that  kinsmen  would  avenge  his 
death  upon  his  slayers.  The  king’s  last  words,  as 
he  saw  himself  girt  about  with  bloodthirsty  foes, 
passed  into  a  proverb:  “God  have  mercy  on  their 
souls,  as  Oswald  said  ere  he  fell.”2  His  body  was 

1  E.  Chron.  a.  642  ;  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  9. 

s  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  12. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


287 

mutilated  and  his  limbs  set  on  stakes  by  the  brutal 
conqueror;'  but  legend  told  that,  when  all  else  of 
Oswald  had  perished,  the  hand  that  Aidan  had 
blessed  still  remained  white  and  uncorrupted.2 

For  a  few  years  after  his  victory  at  the  Maserfeld 
Penda  stood  supreme  in  Britain.  Wessex  must  have 
been  forced  to  own  his  supremacy ; 3  for  its  king, 
Cenwealh,  threw  off  the  Christian  faith  and  married 
Penda’s  sister.  East  Anglia  and  Central  Britain  re¬ 
mained  under  Mercian  sway,  while  the  Northum¬ 
brian  realm  was  a  third  time  broken  up:  for  even 
the  men  of  Deira  seem  to  have  bent  their  necks  to 
Penda ;  and  Oswini,  the  son  of  Osric,whom  they  took 
for  their  king,  in  a  rising  on  Oswald’s  fall,  was  a  mere 
under-king  of  the  Mercian  overlord.4  Bernicia  alone 
refused  to  yield.  Year  by  year  Penda  carried  his 
ravages  over  the  north ;  once  he  reached  even  the 
royal  city,  the  impregnable  rock -fortress  of  Barn- 
borough.  Despairing  of  success  in  an  assault,  he 
pulled  down  the  cottages  around,  and,  piling  their 
wood  against  its  walls,  fired  the  mass  in  a  fair  wind 
that  drove  the  flames  on  the  town.  “  See,  Lord, 
what  ill  Penda  is  doing,”5  cried  Aidan,  from  his  her¬ 
mit  cell  in  the  islet  of  Fame,  as  he  saw  the  smoke 
drifting  over  the  city;  and  a  change  of  wind — so  ran 
the  legend  of  Northumbria’s  agony — drove  back  at 
the  words  the  flames  on  those  who  had  kindled  them. 
But,  burned  and  harried  as  it  was,  Bernicia  still  clung 
to  the  Cross.  Oswiu,  a  third  son  of  /Ethelfrith,  who 
had  been  called  from  Hii  in  642  to  fill  the  throne  of 

1  Ba?da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  13.  2  Ba?da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  6. 

3  Baida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7.  4  Baida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  14. 

5  Bicda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  16. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 

Oswiu. 


288 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Restora¬ 
tion  of 
Northum 
bria. 


his  brother  Oswald,  gave  little  promise  in  his  earlier 
days  of  those  qualities  which  were  to  make  his  later 
reign  a  landmark  in  our  history.1  During  the  first 
nine  years  of  his  reign,  indeed,  he  was  king  only  of 
Bernicia,  and  over  Bernicia  the  host  of  Penda  poured 
summer  after  summer  in  the  terrible  raids  which  we 
have  described.  But,  terrible  as  they  were,  Oswiu 
held  stoutly  to  his  ground ;  and  after  some  years  he 
found  himself  not  only  master  of  his  own  people, 
but  able  to  build  up  again  the  wider  realm  of  the 
Northumbrians. 

Oswini,  who  had  occupied  the  Deiran  throne  since 
the  fight  at  the  Maserfeld,  was  a  son  of  that  Osric 
who  had  reigned  for  the  miserable  year  which  fol¬ 
lowed  Eadwine’s  defeat  at  Heathfield.  But  the  relig¬ 
ious  activity  of  Oswald  and  of  Aidan  had  done  its 
work.  Unlike  his  father,  Oswini  was  a  Christian  to 
the  core ;  and  his  piety  and  humility  won  the  love 
of  Aidan,  as  his  personal  beauty  and  liberality  won 
the  love  of  his  people.3  But  neither  the  one  love  nor 
the  other  could  avert  the  young  king’s  doom.  A 
marriage  which  Oswiu  concluded  showed  his  pur¬ 
pose  of  recovering  Deira.  Eadwine’s  younger  chil¬ 
dren  by  his  Kentish  queen  had  been  carried  by  her, 
after  her  fall,  to  her  Kentish  home  ;3  and  the  death  of 
two  of  them  left  the  girl  Eanfled  the  representative 
of  his  line.  Oswiu  took  Eanfled  to  wife,  as  his  father, 
zEthelfrith,  had  taken  her  aunt  Acha;  and,  in  the 
one  case  as  in  the  other,  the  match  had  a  political 
aim — that  of  neutralizing  the  loyalty  of  the  men  of 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  14.  2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  14. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20.  Really  two  children  and  one  grand¬ 
child. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


289 

Deira  to  the  line  of  Aflla.  It  was,  in  fact,  followed  chap.  vi. 
in  65 1  by  the  march  of  the  Bernician  king  to  the  The 
south.  The  news  of  Oswiu’s  approach  with  an  over-  brian  su- 
powering  host  filled  Oswini  with  despair — a  despair  premacy~ 
quickened,  no  doubt,  by  consciousness  of  the  treach-  617-659. 
ery  which  was  at  work  among  his  subjects ;  he  fled 
to  the  house  of  an  ealdorman  near  Richmond,  and 
was  betrayed  by  him  to  a  thegn  whom  Oswiu  had  de¬ 
spatched  to  kill  him.1  The  blow  broke  Aidan’s  heart ; 
and  twelve  days  after  it  the  bishop  lay  dying  among 
his  brethren  at  Lindisfarne.  Far  off,  on  the  sheep- 
walks  of  the  Lammermoor,  a  shepherd -boy  named 
Cuthbert,  destined  afterwards  to  a  wider  fame,  saw 
stars  falling  thick  over  the  sky  into  the  sea,  and  took 
them  for  angels  carrying  homeward  the  soul  of 
Bishop  Aidan.  But  the  fall  of  Oswini  left  Oswiu 
master  of  Deira;  and  Northumbria  rose  anew  from 
the  union  of  the  two  northern  states — a  union  which 
was  never  henceforth  to  be  dissolved.  Oswini  was 
the  last  male  of  the  old  kingly  stock  of  Deira;  and 
with  the  extinction  of  their  regal  line  passed  away 
the  reluctance  of  the  Deirans  to  submit  to  the  House 
of  Ida.  The  restoration  of  the  Northumbrian  realm 
left  Oswiu  supreme  from  the  Humber  to  the  Forth; 
and  a  great  part  of  the  Welsh,  of  the  Piets,  and  of 
the  Scots,  on  his  western  and  northern  border,  not 
only  bowed  to  his  overlordship  as  they  had  bowed 
to  Oswald’s,  but  even  owned  their  subjection  by  pay¬ 
ment  of  tribute.2 

But  the  reconstruction  of  the  Northumbrian  king-  Oswmand 

0  Penda. 

dom  was  hardly  brought  about  when  a  succession  of 


19 


Bseda  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  14. 


3  Bceda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


2  go 

events  in  Central  Britain  showed  that  Oswiu  had 
taken  up  again  the  wider  task  of  Oswald  and  Ead- 
wine.  In  the  year  after  the  annexation  of  Deira,  in 
652, 1  Penda’s  son  Peada,  whom  his  father  had  set  as 
under-king  over  the  Middle  English,  or  Leicester- 
men,  sought  Oswiu’s  daughter  Alchfleda  to  wife. 
The  two  royal  houses  were  already  linked  by  mar¬ 
riage,  for  Penda’s  daughter  was  the  wife  of  Oswiu’s 
son,  Alchfrith ;  and  Alchfrith’s  persuasion  won  over 
Peada  to  Christianity  as  the  price  of  his  sister’s  hand. 
He  was  baptized  by  Bishop  Finan,  Aidan’s  successor 
in  the  see  of  Lindisfarne,2  and  the  priests  whom 
Peada  brought  back  with  him  preached  busily  and 
successfully,  not  only  among  his  own  subjects,  but 
ventured  in  the  following  year  to  penetrate  even 
among  the  Mercians  themselves.  Penda  gave  them 
no  hindrance.  In  words  which  mark  the  temper  of 
a  man  of  whom  we  would  willingly  know  more,  Baeda 
tells  us  that  the  old  king3  only  “hated  and  scorned 
those  whom  he  saw  not  doing  the  works  of  the  faith 
they  had  received.”4  “They  were  miserable  and 
scorn-worthy  men,”  he  said,  “  who  shrank  from  obey¬ 
ing  the  God  in  whom  they  trusted.”  His  attitude 
proves  that  Penda  looked  with  the  tolerance  of  his 
race  on  all  questions  of  creed,  and  that  he  fought 
not  for  heathendom,  but  for  independence.  If  he 

1  Boeda  does  not  date  the  wooing  of  Peada  or  the  conversion  of 
the  Mid-Engle;  but  as  they  followed  the  annexation  of  Deira  and 

preceded  the  further  attempts  to  convert  the  Mercians  themselves, 
which  he  puts  in  653  (“ccepta  sunt  hoec  biennio  ante  mortem  Pen- 
doe  regis,”  Boeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  21),  we  must  assign  them  to  652. 

3  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  21. 

3  If  he  was  fifty  at  his  accession,  in  626,  he  was  nearly  eighty  when 
he  fell  at  the  Winwsed.  4  Boeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  21. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


291 


struck  down  Eachvine  and  Oswald,  it  was  not  be-  CHAP- VI- 
cause  their  missionaries  spread  along  the  eastern  The 
coast,  but  because  their  lordship  spread  with  their  briansu- 
missionaries.  Quietly,  therefore,  as  he  watched  the  premacy' 
spread  of  the  new  religion  among  his  own  people,  617  659- 
he  may  have  watched  with  jealousy  the  conversion 
of  Essex,  which  took  place  in  the  same  year  that 
the  Northumbrian  preachers  appeared  on  the  upper 
Trent.  The  throwing-off  of  Christianity  and  of  the 
Kentish  supremacy  by  the  two  young  kings  of  the 
East  Saxons  in  the  days  of  Bishop  Mellitus,  had 
been  quickly  followed  by  their  fall  in  a  disastrous 
conflict  with  the  West  Sexe ; 1  but  we  do  not  again 
catch  sight  of  the  little  realm  till  we  find  at  this 
moment  its  king,  Sigeberht,  a  friend  and  guest  of 
Oswiu’s  in  the  king’s  vill  by  the  Roman  Wall.  The 
pressure  of  Oswiu2  brought  about  Sigeberht’s  bap¬ 
tism  and  conversion,  and  his  return  to  his  people 
was  followed  by  Oswiu’s  despatch  of  the  missionary 
Cedd,  who  was  working  among  the  Middle  Engle, 
to  this  new  work  on  the  eastern  coast.3 

The  extension  of  Oswiu’s  influence  over  Essex  was  P^da  ami 
obviously  a  prelude  to  a  renewal  of  the  old  strife  be-  Engle. 
tween  Penda  and  Northumbria  for  the  domination 
over  East  Anglia.  Now,  as  before,  the  supremacy 


1  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5.  The  Gewissas  may  have  been  tempted 
to  replace  HJthelberht’s  overlordship  by  their  own.  or  it  is  possible 
that  the  strife  sprang  simply  from  the  loose  and  unfixed  character 
of  the  frontier  between  the  two  peoples.  See  Stubbs,  in  Diet.  Christ. 
Biog.  vol.  ii.  p.  20.  The  liberty  of  St.  Albans  may  represent  the  waste 
“  mark  ”  between  East  and  West  Sexe. 

2  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  22  :  “  instantia  regis  Oswiu.” 

3  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  22.  Cedd’s  movements  fix  the  date  of  these 
events  in  653. 


292 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


over  East  Anglia  was  essential  to  the  wider  suprem¬ 
acy  of  Northumbria  over  the  centre  of  the  island. 
For  the  new  state  of  Mid-Britain  it  was  more  ;  it  was 
a  question  of  life  and  death.  Without  the  East  En¬ 
gle,  the  power  which  had  again  and  again  grouped 
itself  round  yEthelberht  and  Rasdwald  and  Penda 
must  cease  to  exist.  On  the  other  hand,  the  East 
Engle  were  still  averse  from  the  rule  of  their  fellow- 
Engle  in  the  west;  and  now  that  dependencies  of 
Oswiu’s  lay  on  either  side  of  them,  they  would  natu¬ 
rally  begin  to  stir.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
Penda’s  fresh  attack'  on  them  in  654 — an  attack  in 
which  Sigeberht’s  successor  Anna  was  slain  and  his 
kingdom  cruelly  ravaged — was  the  result  of  a  fresh 
attempt  at  revolt.  A  third  brother,  /Ethelhere,  bowed 
anew  to  the  Mercian  yoke,  and  marched  among  the 
soldiers  of  Penda.  Aithelhere,  we  know  not  how, 
was  the  cause  of  the  war1 2 3  which  followed  with  North¬ 
umbria.  It  is  possible  that  the  under-king  endeav¬ 
ored  to  win  independence  by  playing  off  the  two 
great  powers  on  either  side  of  him  against  one  an¬ 
other.  But  that  Oswiu  strove  to  avert  the  conflict 
we  see  from  the  delivery  of  his  youngest  son,  Ecgfrith, 
as  a  hostage  into  Penda’s  hands.  The  sacrifice, 
however,  proved  useless.  Penda  was  again  the  as¬ 
sailant,  and  his  attack  was  as  vigorous  as  of  old.  He 
was  aided,  too,  by  internal  dissension  in  the  North¬ 
umbrian  realm.  Oidilwald,  a  son  of  Oswald,  had 
been  set  by  Oswiu2  as  an  under-king  over  at  least 
part  of  Deira ;  but  in  this  crisis  he  joined  the  Mer- 


1  Ba?da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  18.  For  date,  see  Hussey’s  note. 

2  “  Auctor  ipse  belli  ”  (Ba?da,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24). 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  23,  24. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


293 

cians,  and  his  defection  opened  a  way  for  Penda’s 
march  into  the  heart  of  the  land. 

The  old  king  again  passed  ravaging  over  the  coun¬ 
try  as  far  northward  as  Bamborough,  “destroying  all 
he  could  with  fire  and  sword;”1  while  Oswiu,  unable 
to  meet  him  in  the  field,  was  driven  by  need  to  seek 
for  peace.  Penda,  however,  set  roughly  aside  the 
gifts  which  the  king  offered;  he  had  resolved,  so 
men  believed,  to  root  out  and  destroy  the  whole  peo¬ 
ple  of  the  Northumbrians.  But,  broken  as  they  were, 
despair  gave  strength  to  the  men  of  the  north.  A 
small  host  gathered  round  Oswiu,  and  the  king 
vowed — should  the  day  be  his — to  give  his  daughter 
to  God  and  to  found  twelve  monasteries.  “  Since 
the  pagan  will  not  take  our  gifts,”  he  said,  “  let  us 
offer  them  to  One  that  will.”  Success,  however, 
seemed  hopeless;  for  when  Oswiu  met  the  Mercian 
army  near  the  river  Winwaed  in  655,  he  found  it 
thrice  as  strong  as  his  own.  Thirty  ealdormen  fol¬ 
lowed  Penda ;  Avthelhere  brought  his  East  Angli- 
ans  to  his  aid,  and  Oidilwald  the  men  of  Eastern 
Deira.  Never  had  the  odds  seemed  more  unequal, 
but  never  was  an  overthrow  more  complete.  Oidil¬ 
wald  proved  as  faithless  to  Penda  as  he  had  proved 
to  Oswiu :  he  drew  off  his  men  in  the  midst  of  the 
fight  and  waited  for  its  issue.  It  ended  in  the  rout 
and  slaughter  of  the  Mercians.  Great  rains  had 
swelled  the  river  in  the  rear  of  their  broken  host, 
“  and  more  were  drowned  in  their  flight  than  fell 
by  the  sword.”  But  the  noblest  of  the  Mercian  war¬ 
riors  remained  on  the  field.2  Of  the  thirty  ealdor- 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 

Battle  of 
the  Win- 
weed. 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  17. 


3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24. 


294 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Fall  of 
Mercia. 


men  who  marched  at  Penda’s  bidding  hardly  one  was 
left  alive ;  zEthelhere  fell  fighting  in  the  midst  of 
his  East  Englishmen,  and  Penda  himself  was  slain. 
“  In  the  river  Winwaed,”  rang  out  the  triumphant 
battle-song  of  the  conquerors — 


“  In  the  river  Winwaed  is  avenged  the  slaughter  of  Anna, 

The  slaughter  of  the  kings  Sigberht  and  Ecgrice, 

The  slaughter  of  the  kings  Oswald  and  Edwine.”' 

For  the  moment  the  ruin  of  Mercia  seemed  com¬ 
plete.  The  supremacy  it  had  won  over  its  neigh¬ 
bors  to  the  south  must  have  passed  away  with  the 
great  defeat.  The  West  Saxons  resumed  their  old 
independence,  and  the  force  which  they  gained  from 
this  deliverance  spurred  them  to  take  up  again  their 
long-interrupted  advance  against  the  Britons  in  the 
west.  In  655,  a  victory  at  Bradford  on  the  Avon 
drove  the  Welsh  from  their  stronghold  in  the  wood¬ 
lands  which  ran  like  a  wedge  into  West-Saxon  land 
up  the  valley  of  the  Frome  ;  and  a  second  campaign, 
three  years  later,  settled  the  West  Saxons  as  con¬ 
querors  round  the  sources  of  the  Parret.  But  the 
loss  of  outer  influence  was  little  beside  the  internal 
ruin  of  the  Mercian  State  itself.  The  power  which 
had  grown  up  in  Central  Britain  crumbled  beneath 
Oswiu’s  blow.  The  peoples  whom  Penda  had  brought 
together  sheered  off  into  their  old  isolation.  East 
Anglia,  the  actual  prize  of  the  contest,  naturally  found 
a  new  overlord  in  Oswiu.  Lindsey  passed  under  the 
direct  rule  of  the  Northumbrian  conqueror,  and  if 
the  Southumbrians  about  Nottingham  escaped  the 

1  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  ed.  Arnold,  p.  60,  has  preserved  this 
snatch  of  English  song. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


295 


same  fate,  it  was  by  their  revival  as  a  distinct  king-  chap. vr. 
dom,  though  subject,  no  doubt,  to  the  overlord  in  the  The 
north.  The  removal  of  Peada  from  his  sovereignty  brian  su- 
over  the  Middle  English  of  Leicester  shows  that  premacy- 
these  too,  probably  with  their  neighbors  the  South  617-659- 
English  of  Northampton,  were  freed  from  the  su¬ 
premacy  of  Mercia.  The  Mercian  people  itself,  re¬ 
duced  as  it  thus  was  to  its  original  settlement  along 
the  upper  Trent,  lost  its  national  unity.  Its  old  di¬ 
vision  into  a  North-Mercian  and  a  South-Mercian 
folk  reappeared,1  whether  from  civil  strife  which  fol¬ 
lowed  on  the  great  defeat,  or  as  a' part  of  the  policy 
of  their  conqueror.  The  larger  part  of  the  Mercian 
people,  the  North  Mercians  who  dwelt  on  the  north 
side  of  the  Trent,  were  made  directly  subject  to 
Northumbria.  The  South  Mercians  alone  remained 
under  the  rule  of  Peada ;  but  Peada  only  received 
his  kingship  over  them  as  a  gift  from  Oswiu,2  and 
that  not  because  he  was  of  the  kingly  stock,  but  be¬ 
cause  he  was  bound  to  Oswiu  by  the  ties  of  his  mar¬ 
riage  and  his  Christian  faith. 

Oswiu,  on  the  other  hand,  was  sovereign  over  Supremacy 
Britain  as  no  English  king  save  Eadwine  had  been 
before  him.3  The  supremacy  of  Northumbria  over 

1  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24. 

2  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24:  “  Donavit  (Oswiu)  Peada  .  .  .  eo  quod 
esset  cognatus  suus,  regnum  australium  Merciorum.” 

3  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24:  “  Tribus  annis  post  occisionem  Pendan 
regis,  Merciorum  genti,  necnon  et  creteris  australium  provinciarum 
populis  prrefuit,  qui  etiam  gentem  Pictorum  maxima  ex  parte  reg¬ 
no  Anglorum  subjecit.”  So  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  5,  says  of  Oswiu  : 
“Aiqualibus  pene  terminis  (as  those  of  Oswald  and  Eadwine),  reg¬ 
num  nonnullo  tempore  coercens,  Pictorum  quoque  atque  Scottorum 
gentes,  qure  septemtrionales  Brittanire  fines  tenent,  maxima  ex  parte 
perdomuit  ac  tributarias  fecit.” 


296 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap^vi.  the  Britons  of  Cumbria  and  Strathclyde  was  re- 
The  stored.  The  Piets  and  Scots  of  the  north  were  forced 
brian  Su-  to  pay  tribute.  In  Mid-Britain,  Oswiu  no  longer  saw 
premacy.  a  p0wer  growing  fast  into  a  danger,  but  a  mass  of 
617-659.  broken  peoples,  all  of  them  in  some  way  owing  him 
obedience.  Over  Lindsey,  the  men  of  North  Mercia, 
and  the  South  English,  he  must  have  ruled  for  the 
moment  in  direct  sovereignty ; 1  while  the  petty  king¬ 
dom  of  the  Southumbrians,  the  larger  realms  of  the 
East  Anglians  and  the  East  Saxons,  probably  the 
West  Saxons  themselves,  owned  his  supremacy. 
Northumbria  itself,  too,  was  finally  made.  The  royal 
stock  of  Deira  had  come  to  an  end,  and  with  its  ex¬ 
tinction  passed  away  the  strife  between  the  men  of 
Bernicia.  From  Oswiu’s  day  all  the  Englishmen  of 
the  north  were  simply  Northumbrians,  and  this  inner 
unity  gave  fresh  weight  to  the  political  influence 
which  the  kingdom  exerted  outside  its  own  bounds. 
Rrv'?cic, f  But  dream  a  single  people  gathered  together 
around  the  kings  of  Northumbria  no  sooner  seemed 
realized  than  it  vanished  forever  away.  Peada  had 
scarcely  received  the  gift  of  the  South-Mercian  realm 
when  his  death  tempted  Oswiu  to  complete  his  mas¬ 
tery  of  Central  Britain  by  annexing  even  the  small 
folk  that  the  young  king  had  ruled.  For  three  years 
the  Mercians  bore  this  foreign  rule;  but  in  659  the 
whole  people  broke  out  in  revolt,  drove  Oswiu’s 
thegns  from  the  land,  and  raised  a  younger  son  of 
Penda,  who  had  till  now  remained  in  hiding,  to  the 
throne."  Under  its  new  king,  Wulfhere,  Mercia  rose 


1  “  Ipso  (Penda)  occiso,  cum  Oswiu  rex  Christianus  regnum  ejus 

acciperet”  (Bteda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  21).  2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24. 


Stan/uri't  Utographi  E$u 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  vr. 
The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


298 

at  once  into  a  power  greater  than  that  of  Penda,  and 
which  it  would  need  a  greater  victory  than  that  of 
the  Winwaed  to  overthrow.  But  the  revolution 
marked  more  than  the  revival  of  Mercia.  It  marked 
the  abandonment  by  Northumbria  of  her  long  efforts 
to  carry  her  supremacy  over  the  rest  of  Britain.  So 
irresistible  had  been  the  movement  of  revolt  that 
Oswiu  seems  to  have  acquiesced  without  a  struggle 
in  the  overthrow  of  his  rule,  and  to  have  contented 
himself  for  the  few  remaining  years  of  his  life  with  a 
nominal  overlordship  across  the  Humber.  Even  this 
passed  away  at  his  death,  in  670,  and  his  successors 
sank  into  merely  local  sovereigns.1  Whatever  bick- 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  lib.  ii.,  ends  his  list  of  those  who  held  an  impe- 
rium  with  Oswiu.  yEthelberht  of  Kent  “tertius  quidem  in  regibus 
gentis  Anglorum,  cunctis  australibus  eorum  provinciis  quse  Humbrae 
fluvio  et  contiguis  ei  terminis  sequestrantur  a  borealibus  imperavit ; 
sed  primus  omnium  caelestia  regna  conscendit.  Nam  primus  impe- 
rium  hujusmodi  yElli  rex  Australium  Saxonum  ;  secundus  Caelin  rex 
Occidentalium  Saxonum,  qui  lingua  eorum  Ceaulin  vocabatur ;  ter¬ 
tius,  ut  dixi,  Hidilberct  rex  Cantuariorum ;  quartus  Redwald  rex 
Orientalium  Anglorum,  qui  etiam  vivente  Hfdilbercto  eidem  suae 
genti  ducatum  praebebat,  obtinuit ;  quintus  zEduin  rex  Nordan- 
hymbrorum  gentis,  id  est,  ejus  quae  ad  borealem  Humbrae  fluminis 
plagam  inhabitat,  majore  potentia  cunctis  qui  Brittaniam  incolunt, 
Anglorum  pariter  et  Brittonum  populis  praefuit,  praeter  Cantuariis 
tantum  ;  necnon  et  Mevanias  Brittonum  insulas,  quae  inter  Hiber- 
niam  et  Brittaniam  sitae  sunt,  Anglorum  subjecit  imperio ;  sextus 
Osuald  et  ipse  Nordanhymbrorum  rex  Christianissimus,  hisdem  fini- 
bus  regnum  tenuit;  septimus  Oswiu  frater  ejus,  aequalibus  pene 
terminis  regnum  nonnullo  tempore  coercens,  Pictorum  quoque  at- 
que  Scottorum  gentes,  quae  septemtrionales  Brittaniae  fines  tenuit, 
maxima  ex  parte  perdomuit,  ac  tributarias  fecit  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl. 
ii.  5).  In  the  middle  of  the  ninth  century  the  clerk  of  Winchester, 
who  threw  together  the  earlier  entries  of  the  English  Chronicle, 
when  he  reached  his  entry  for  the  year  827,  “  In  this  year  king  Ecg- 
berht  conquered  the  Mercian  kingdom  and  all  that  was  south  of 
Humber,”  added,  “and  he  was  the  eighth  king  that  was  Bretwalda.” 
Then  copying  from  B;eda  this  list  of  names  from  JEWa  to  Oswiu,  he 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


299 


erings  over  a  border  province  there  might  be  with 
Mercia,  no  Northumbrian  king  from  that  time  made 
any  effort  to  crush  the  rival  states  in  Central  or 


adds  at  the  close  of  it,  “  the  eighth  was  Ecgberht,  King  of  the  West 
Saxons.”  The  two  passages  together  form  the  ground  of  Sir  F. 
Palgrave’s  theory  of  a  derivation  of  the  Roman  Imperial  authority 
through  Maximus,  etc.,  to  /Ella  and  Ecgberht,  which  is  examined 
and  dismissed  by  Mr.  Freeman  (Norman  Conquest,  vol.  i.  appendix, 
note  B),  and  of  Mr.  Freeman’s  own  theory  of  the  Bretwaldadom,  in 
which  the  imperium  of  Breda  is  made  to  mean  “  a  real  though  not 
an  abiding  or  a  very  well-defined  supremacy  which  was  often,  per¬ 
haps  generally,  held  by  some  one  of  the  Teutonic  princes  of  Britain 
over  as  many  of  his  neighbors,  Celtic  and  Teutonic  alike,  as  he 
could  extend  it  over.”  The  little  word  Celtic  in  this  very  cautious¬ 
ly  expressed  passage  is,  no  doubt,  big  enough  to  serve  as  a  base  for 
the  theory  of  an  imperial  character  which  Mr.  Freeman  attributes 
to  the  rule  of  the  later  West-Saxon  kings  through  their  supremacy 
over  the  Celtic  peoples  about  them.  Such  a  theory  in  the  case  of 
the  later  monarchy  may  be  true  or  false ;  but  in  applying  it  to  the 
kings  in  Breda’s  list  we  seem  to  me  to  be  going  beyond  the  evidence 
we  possess.  As  to  the  title  Bretwalda,  there  is  no  ground  for  as¬ 
suming  it  to  be  earlier  than  the  date  at  which  we  first  find  it  in  the 
Chronicle,  or  for  giving  it,  with  Swithun’s  clerk,  to  these  earlier 
rulers.  The  silence  not  only  of  Bseda,  but  of  every  historical  docu¬ 
ment  or  charter  up  to  the  ninth  century,  is  surely  fatal  to  any 
theory  of  its  official  existence  at  this  time.  Nor  can  we  attach  any 
great  weight  to  the  historical  knowledge  of  the  writer  who  attrib¬ 
utes  it  to  /Ella  and  Oswiu,  when  we  find  that  as  soon  as  he  comes 
to  the  end  of  Breda’s  list  the  chronicler  leaps  over  a  century  and  a 
half  of  our  history,  and  over  kings  such  as  /Ethelbald  and  Offa,  to 
pin  his  own  sovereign  Ecgberht  on  to  the  close  of  it.  But  if  we  set 
aside  the  word  Bretwalda,  and  the  theories  which  I  believe  its  in¬ 
correct  rendering  as  “ruler  of  the  Britons”  first  gathered  round  it, 
and  restrict  ourselves  to  the  meaning  of  Breda’s  imperium,  the  mat¬ 
ter  becomes  very  much  simpler.  Breda  himself  explains  the  impe¬ 
rium  as  a  ducatus — the  position,  that  is,  of  a  here-toga,  or  war-leader. 
There  is  no  historic  ground  in  the  case  of  the  first  four  kings  in  his 
list  for  extending  such  a  war-leadership  over  any  Britons  at  all.  In 
the  case  of  /Ella,  indeed,  Mr.  Freeman  admits  such  a  supposition  to 
be  impossible.  But  the  passages  which  show  that  in  ^Ella’s  later 
days  the  attacks  of  the  Gewissas  on  the  coast  of  the  Gwent  were 
supported  by  forces  from  Kent  and  Sussex  make  it,  at  any  rate,  pos- 


CHAP.  VI. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617  659. 


300 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  vr. 

The 

Northum¬ 
brian  Su¬ 
premacy. 

617-659. 


Southern  Britain ;  the  threefold  division  of  the  con¬ 
quered  land  was  accepted  as  a  settled  fact  by  the 
statesmen  of  the  north  ;  and  if  they  henceforth  sought 
to  widen  their  borders,  it  was  not  by  conquests  over 
Englishmen,  but  by  conquests  over  Cumbrian  or  Piet. 


sible  that  this  union  of  the  three  peoples  in  their  attack  was  under 
the  war-leadership  of  this  king,  who  must  at  that  time  have  held 
the  highest  position  among  the  conquering  tribes.  Of  Ceawlin  in 
this  respect  we  know  nothing ;  but  Breda  has  carefully  defined  for 
us  the  limits  both  of  AEthelberht’s  and  Rredwald’s  supremacy,  and 
in  neither  case  is  any  British  people  included  within  it.  In  their 
cases  the  imperium  must  have  meant  a  supremacy  or  war-lead¬ 
ership  over  Englishmen  alone ;  and  it  is  in  this  sense,  therefore, 
that  we  must  apply  the  word  to  Eadwine,  Oswald,  and  Oswiu, 
though  these  three  Northumbrian  kings  undoubtedly  had  British 
peoples  among  their  tributaries.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the 
chronicler’s  entry  came  about  in  a  very  simple  way.  In  the  passage 
of  Breda  which  lay  before  him  he  read  that  HJthelberht  “cunctis 
australibus  eorum  provinciis  quae  Humbraefluvio  et  contiguis  ei  ter- 
minis  sequestrantur  a  borealibus  imperavit.”  Here,  as  in  so  many 
cases  throughout  his  book,  Breda  is  distinguishing  between  the 
“  Nordanhymbri  ”  and  the  “  Sudanhymbri  ” — the  Engle  north  of  the 
Humber,  and  the  Engle  south  of  it,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  Kentish- 
men  and  the  various  Saxon  tribes.  What  he  points  out  is,  that  it 
was  over  the  Southern  Engle — the  Engle,  that  is,  of  Mid-Britain  or 
the  later  Mercia  —  that  Hithelberht’s  imperium  extended,  and  it 
was  over  the  same  district  that  Rredwald’s  imperium  extended  after 
him.  Now,  if  we  look  at  the  chronicler’s  entry,  we  shall  see  that  it 
was  not  when  the  Kentishmen  submitted  to  him  in  823,  or  when  he 
completed  his  conquests  by  the  annexation  of  Northumbria,  that 
the  writer  tags  Ecgberht  on  to  the  Bretwaldas,  but  when  in  the  in¬ 
terval  between  them  he  conquered  “the  kingdom  of  the  Mer¬ 
cians  and  all  that  was  south  of  the  Humber.”  The  chronicler’s  own 
words  probably  recalled  to  him  Breda’s  phrase  about  an  imperium 
over  “all  the  provinces  south  of  the  Humber,”  and  in  a  very  natu¬ 
ral,  if  pedantic,  way  he  at  once  linked  on  his  hero  to  the  list  of 
Breda’s  seven  kings.  This  would  account  for  his  omission  of  names 
like  that  of  Offa,  so  startling  to  Mr.  Kemble ;  for  from  Oswiu’s  day 
to  Ecgberht’s  day  no  one  had  made  this  particular  conquest  of 
Mercia,  just  because  Mercia  during  this  period  had  been  the  domi¬ 
nant  power  in  Southern  Britain. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


301 


CHAPTER  VII. 

THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  KINGDOMS. 

659-690. 

With  the  failure  of  Northumbria,  the  union  of  the 
conquerors  of  Britain  in  a  single  nation  for  the  time 
became  impossible.  Far  as  the  northern  kingdom 
surpassed  the  rest  in  political  and  military  develop¬ 
ment,  half  a  century  of  bitter  struggle  had  failed  to 
reveal  in  it  such  a  preponderance  of  power  as  would 
force  the  states  south  of  the  Humber  to  bow  to  its 
permanent  supremacy.  That  Mercia  or  Wessex 
should  succeed  where  Northumbria  had  failed  was 
as  yet  out  of  the  question ;  and  when  Oswiu’s  realm 
withdrew  into  practical  isolation,  all  hope  of  national 
union  seemed  to  vanish  away.  But  at  this  moment 
a  new  element  began  to  play  its  part  in  English  life. 
The  battle  of  the  Winwaed  had  proved  a  delusive 
triumph  for  Northumbria;  but  it  was  a  decisive  vic¬ 
tory  for  the  Cross.  With  it  all  active  resistance  on 
the  part  of  the  older  heathendom  came  to  an  end. 
Christianity,  which  had  gradually  won  recognition  as 
a  State  religion  in  Northern,  Eastern,  and  Southern 
Britain,  became,  with  the  submission  of  Mercia,  the 
faith  of  the  new  England  at  large ;  and  the  worship 
of  Woden  only  lingered  for  a  few  years  to  come  in 
the  petty  and  isolated  kingdom  of  the  South  Saxons, 
which  lay  severed  from  the  rest  of  the  island  by  the 


The 
Church 
and  the 
nation. 


302 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap. vir.  Andredsweald.  The  religious  hopes  of  Gregory 
The  were  realized  in  the  subjection  of  Britain  to  the  new 
ana  the  faith,  and  the  time  had  come  for  the  carrying-out  of 
Kingdoms.  j-}10se  p]ans  which  he  had  devised  for  its  ecclesiasti- 
659-690.  ca]  administration.  Nothing  was  more  characteris¬ 
tic  of  Roman  Christianity  than  its  administrative  or¬ 
ganization.  Its  ordered  hierarchy  of  bishops,  priests, 
and  lower  clergy,  its  judicial  and  deliberative  ma¬ 
chinery,  its  courts  and  its  councils,  had  become  a 
part  of  its  very  existence,  and  settled  with  it  on  ev¬ 
ery  land  that  it  won.  Gregory,  as  we  have  seen, 
had  plotted  out  the  yet  heathen  Britain  into  an  or¬ 
dered  Church  with  two  archbishoprics,  each  sur¬ 
rounded  by  twelve  suffragan  sees ;  and  though  the 
carrying-out  of  this  scheme  in  its  actual  form  had 
proved  impossible,  yet  it  was  certain  that  the  first 
effort  of  the  Roman  see,  now  that  the  ground  was 
clear,  would  be  to  replace  it  by  some  analogous  ar¬ 
rangement.  But  no  such  religious  organization 
could  stamp  itself  on  English  soil  without  telling  on 
the  civil  organization  about  it.  The  regular  subor¬ 
dination  of  priest  to  bishop,  of  bishop  to  primate,  in 
the  administration  of  the  Church  would  supply  a 
mould  on  which  the  civil  organization  of  the  State 
would  unconsciously,  but  irresistibly,  shape  itself. 
The  gatherings  of  the  clergy  in  national  synods 
would  inevitably  lead  the  way  to  national  gatherings 
for  civil  legislation.  Above  all,  if  the  nation  in  its 
spiritual  capacity  came  to  recognize  the  authority  of 
a  single  primate,  it  would  insensibly  be  led,  in  its 
temporal  capacity,  to  recognize  a  single  sovereign. 
The,  .  But  the  hopes  of  such  an  organization  rested  in 
the  ?ioi-tht  the  submission  of  the  English  states  to  the  Church 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


303 


of  Rome  ;  and  it  was  not  the  Church  of  Rome  which  chap.  vn. 
had  won  the  victory  of  the  Winwaed,  or  which  seemed  The 
likely  to  reap  its  fruits.  After  its  efforts  at  exten-  ^ the 
sion  under  /Ethelberht  and  Eadwine,  the  Roman  Kingdoms~ 
mission  had  for  a  while  sunk  into  a  mere  Church  of  659  6£0- 
Kent;  and  though  the  Burgundian  Felix,  who  had 
taken  the  lead  in  a  mission  to  East  Anglia,* 1  and 
Birinus,  with  his  successor,  the  Frankish  bishop 
Agilberct,  who  were  preaching  in  Wessex,"  were 
both  attached  to  the  Roman  communion,  the  recent 
and  imperfect  conversion  of  these  countries  gave 
them  as  yet  little  weight  in  the  religious  balance  of 
the  country.  The  real  life  and  energy  of  the  new 
Christianity  were  concentrated  in  the  north,  and  the 
north  looked  for  its  religious  centre,  not  to  Rome, 
but  to  Ireland.  Never  was  the  connection  of  Brit¬ 
ain  with  Ireland  closer  than  in  the  years  that  fol¬ 
lowed  Penda’s  fall.  The  spell  which  it  cast  over 
Northumbria  was  irresistible.3  To  cross  the  Irish 
Channel,  whether  for  piety  or  for  learning,  became 
a  fashion  in  the  north,4  while  fresh  missionaries 
streamed  over  in  turn  to  wander  into  the  wildest 
spots  where  English  heathendom  found  a  hold. 

One  solitary  made  his  way  as  far  as  the  South  Sax¬ 
ons.5 6  Another  settled  among  the  East  Englishmen, 
and  left  his  memory  to  a  monastery  in  Suffolk.0, 

% 

1  Bifida,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  15.  2  Bifida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7. 

3  We  see  an  amusing  proof  of  this  in  Bicda’s  statement  that  he 

had  seen  persons  bitten  by  serpents  cured  by  drinking  water  into 
which  scrapings  of  the  leaves  of  books  that  had  been  brought  out 
of  Ireland  had  been  put  (Bifida,  Hist.  Eccl.  i.  1). 

4  Bacda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7  ;  iv.  3,  4 ;  v.  9,  10. 

5  Dicul.  Baida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  13. 

6  Fursey.  Bifida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  19. 


304 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Cuthbert. 


Nor  was  the  Northumbrian  Church  itself  wanting 
in  missionaries  as  ardent  as  these.  The  brothers 
Cedd  and  Ceadda — one  the  apostle  of  Essex,1  the  oth¬ 
er  of  the  Mercians  (the  St.  Chadd  to  whom  the  Mer¬ 
cian  see  of  Lichfield  still  looks  as  its  founder) — were 
only  instances  of  the  zeal  of  their  day.  So  simple 
and  lowly  in  temper  was  Ceadda  that  he  travelled  on 
foot  in  his  mission  journeys  till  Archbishop  Theo¬ 
dore,  in  later  days,  lifted  him  with  his  own  hands  on 
horseback.  The  poetry  of  their  early  Christian  en¬ 
thusiasm  breaks  out  in  the  death-legend  that  tells 
how  voices  of  singers  singing  sweetly  descended 
from  heaven  to  a  little  cell  beside  St.  Mary’s  Church, 
where  the  Mercian  bishop  lay  dying.  Then  “  the 
same  song  ascended  from  the  roof  again  and  re¬ 
turned  heavenward  by  the  same  way  that  it  came.” 2 

But  the  work  of  these  missionaries  has  been  al¬ 
most  lost  in  the  glory  of  Cuthbert.3  No  story  better 
lights  up  for  us  the  religious  life  of  the  time  than  the 
story  of  this  apostle  of  the  Lowlands — a  story  that 
carries  us  into  the  northernmost  part  of  Northumbria, 
into  the  country  of  the  Teviot  and  the  Tweed.  Born 
on  the  southern  edge  of  the  Lammermoor,  a  line  of 
dark  uplands  which  runs  eastward  to  the  sea  at 
Dunbar,  Cuthbert  found  shelter  at  eight  years  old 
in  the  house  of  a  widow  who  dwelt  in  the  village 
of  Wrangholm.  In  after  -  years  he  loved  to  tell 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  22,  23. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  3. 

3  For  Cuthbert  we  have  («)  an  anonymous  life  by  a  contem¬ 
porary  (in  Baeda,  Opera  Minora,  ed.  Stevenson,  p.  259) ;  ( b )  a  life  by 
Baeda,  in  some  measure  drawn  from  this,  but  with  fresh  informa¬ 
tion  from  contemporaries  (in  the  same  volume,  p.  49) ;  and  Boeda’s 
abstract  of  the  latter  in  his  Ecclesiastical  History,  iv.  27. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


305 


stories  of  his  boyhood — of  the  strength  and  agility  chap.  vii. 
which  made  him  the  best  runner  and  wrestler  among  The 
the  village  children,  of  his  quickness  of  wit,  his  love  and  the 
of  laughter  and  fun.'  But  already  his  robust  frame  Kingdoms- 
hid  a  poetic  sensibility  which  caught,  even  in  the  659  69°- 
chance  word  of  a  game,  a  call  to  higher  things.  An 
attack  of  lameness  deepened  the  religious  impres¬ 
sion.  It  was  for  his  sins,  the  boy  thought,  that  God 
had  chained  and  bound  him  ;  and  a  rider  who  came 
one  day  over  the  hill,  mounted  on  a  fine  horse,  and 
clad  in  the  graceful  white  riding-cloak  which  was 
common  among  the  nobles  of  the  time,  seemed,  as 
he  pitied  and  tended  the  injured  limb,  an  angel  sent 
to  bring  forgiveness  and  health.2  From  that  time 
Cuthbert’s  bent  was  to  a  religious  life.  It  was  of 
this  that  he  dreamed  as  he  kept  his  master’s  sheep 
on  the  bleak  uplands  whence  the  Leader  flows  into 
the  Tweed  —  upland  still  famous  as  a  sheep-walk, 
though  a  scant  herbage  scarce  veils  the  whinstone 
rock.3  We  see  him  for  a  while  keeping  watches  of 
prayer  in  the  night  while  his  comrades  sleep  around, 
or  in  lonelier  hours  breaking  the  stillness  of  the 
heights  with  hymns,  or  seeing  in  splendor  of  falling 
stars  and  northern  lights  angel-troops  ascending  and 
descending  between  earth  and  heaven.  The  news 
which  was  “  noised  far  and  wide  ”  of  Bishop  Aidan’s 
death  woke  him  from  this  dream-life,  and  in  651  he 
made  his  way  to  a  group  of  straw-thatched  log-huts 
in  the  midst  of  an  unfilled  solitude,  where  a  few  Irish 
monks  from  Lindisfarne  had  settled  in  the  mission- 
station  of  Melrose.1 

1  Anon.  Vit.  p.  261.  2  Anon.  Vit.  p.  262.  3  Anon.  Vit.  p.  263. 

4  Anon.  Vit.  pp.  264,  267  ;  Bada’s  Life,  cap.  6.  This  was  not  on  the 

20 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 

His  mis¬ 
sion  work. 


306 

To-day  the  land  is  a  land  of  poetry  and  romance,, 
Cheviot  and  Lammermoor,  Ettrick  and  Teviotdale, 
Yarrow  and  Annan  Water,  are  musical  with  old  bal¬ 
lads  and  border  minstrelsy.  Agriculture  has  chosen 
its  valleys  for  her  favorite  seat,  and  drainage  and 
steam-power  have  turned  sedgy  marshes  into  farm 
and  meadow.  But  to  see  the  lowlands  as  they  were 
in  Cuthbert’s  day,  we  must  sweep  meadow  and  farm 
away  again,  and  replace  them  by  vast  solitudes,  dot¬ 
ted  here  and  there  with  clusters  of  wooden  hovels, 
and  crossed  by  boggy  tracts  along  which  travellers 
rode  spear  in  hand  and  eye  kept  cautiously  about 
them.1  Though  the  new  religion  had  already  its 
adherents  even  in  remote  villages,  the  Northumbrian 
peasantry  were,  for  the  most  part,  Christians  only  in 
name.  With  the  general  religious  indifference  of 
their  race,  they  had  yielded  to  their  thegns  in  nomi¬ 
nally  accepting  the  new  belief,  as  these  had  yielded 
to  the  king.  But  they  retained  their  old  supersti¬ 
tions  side  by  side  with  the  new  worship ;  plague  or 
mishap  drove  them  back  to  a  reliance  on  their  hea¬ 
then  charms  and  amulets ;  and  if  trouble  befell  the 


site  of  the  present  abbey,  but  at  the  spot  known  as  “  Old  Melrose.” 
“  On  a  green  sheltered  slope,  a  little  below  the  point  where  the 
Tweed  receives  the  scanty  waters  of  the  Leader,  and  then  takes  a 
bold  semicircular  sweep  under  the  wood  and  rocks  of  Bemerside  ” 
(Raine,  Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography,  i.  725).  Thence  after  a 
few  years  he  went  to  Ripon  with  his  abbot  Eata,  to  whom  King 
Alchfrid  had  given  ground  there  for  a  monastery,  but  was  expelled 
in  661  by  Wilfrid,  and  returned  to  Melrose  to  face  the  pestilence. 
In  664,  after  the  Synod  of  Whitby,  he  was  sent  as  prior  to  Lindis- 
farne,  and  after  staying  there  twelve  years  (664-676)  withdrew  to 
the  isle  of  Fame.  It  was  these  later  years  at  Melrose  and  Lindis- 
farne  that  formed  the  time  of  his  main  mission  work. 

1  Bseda,  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  6. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


307 


Christian  preachers  who  came  settling  among  them, 
they  took  it  as  proof  of  the  wrath  of  the  older  gods. 
When  some  log-rafts,  which  were  floating  down  the 
Tyne  for  the  construction  of  an  abbey  at  its  mouth, 
drifted,  with  the  monks  who  were  at  work  on  them, 
out  to  sea,  the  rustic  bystanders  shouted,  “  Let  no¬ 
body  pray  for  them  ;  let  nobody  pity  these  men,  who 
have  taken  away  from  us  our  old  worship ;  and  how 
their  new-fangled  customs  are  to  be  kept,  nobody 
knows.”1  While  Oswiu  was  nerving  himself  for  the 
struggle  with  Penda,  Cuthbert  w'andered  among  lis¬ 
teners  such  as  these,  choosing,  above  all,  the  remoter 
mountain  villages  from  whose  roughness  and  pov¬ 
erty  other  teachers  turned  aside.  Unlike  his  Irish 
comrades,  the  missionaries  who  had  followed  Aidan, 
he  needed  no  interpreter  as  he  passed  from  village 
to  village:  the  frugal,  long-headed  Northumbrians 
listened  willingly  to  one  who  was  himself  a  peasant 
of  the  Lowlands,  and  who  had  caught  the  rough 
Northumbrian  burr  along  the  banks  of  the  7' weed. 
His  patience,  his  humorous  good-sense,  the  sweet¬ 
ness  of  his  look,  told  for  him,  and  not  less  the  vigor¬ 
ous  frame  which  fitted  the  peasant-preacher  for  the 
hard  life  he  had  chosen.  “  Never  did  man  die  of 
hunger  who  served  God  faithfully,”  he  would  say 
when  nightfall  found  them  supperless  in  the  waste. 
“  Look  at  the  eagle  overhead !  God  can  feed  us 
through  him  if  he  will ;”  and  once,  at  least,  he  owed 
his  meal  to  a  fish  that  the  scared  bird  had  let  fall." 
At  another  time,  a  snow-storm  drove  his  boat  on  the 
coast  of  Fife.  “  The  snow  closes  the  road  alon^  the 

o 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659  690. 


Baeda,  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  3. 


5  Bseda,  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  1 2. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


308 

charvii.  shore,”  mourned  his  comrades  ;  “  the  storm  bars  our 
The  way  over-sea.”  “  There  is  still  the  way  of  heaven 
and  the  that  lies  open,”  said  Cuthbert. 

Kingdoms.  gut)  poetic  as  was  its  temper,  and  unwearied  as 
659-690.  was  the  energy  which  it  showed  in  the  work  of  con- 
Severance  version,  the  success  of  the  Irish  Church  threatened 
churches.  Britain  with  both  political  and  religious  ills.  The 
Celtic  Church,  as  we  have  seen,  in  its  own  Irish  home, 
was  utterly  devoid  of  that  power  of  organization 
which  was  the  strength  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 
Hundreds  of  wandering  bishops;  avast  religious  au¬ 
thority  wielded  by  hereditary  chieftains ;  an  inextri¬ 
cable  confusion  of  tribal  quarrels,  and  ecclesiastical 
controversies  in  which  the  clergy,  robbed  of  all  really 
spiritual  influence,  contributed  no  element  save  that 
of  disorder  to  the  State ;  a  wild  jungle-growth  of  as¬ 
ceticism  which  dissociated  piety  from  morality;  and 
the  absence  of  those  larger  and  more  humanizing 
influences  which  a  wider  world  alone  can  give — this 
is  the  picture  which  the  Irish  Church  of  later  times 
presents  to  us.  Nor  would  the  Irish  Church  in 
Northern  Britain  have  found  very  different  fortunes. 
It  had  brought  with  it  the  purely  monastic  system 
of  its  home  ;  and,  great  as  were  its  missionary  labors, 
it  showed  no  trace  of  any  power  of  moulding  the 
new  Christianity  into  an  ordered  form.  But  even 
had  it  shown  such  a  power,  its  permanent  establish¬ 
ment  would  have  been  none  the  less  disastrous.  The 
religious  unity  of  the  English  race  would,  in  fact, 
have  been  broken  even  more  fatally  than  its  politi¬ 
cal  unity  was  broken.  To  the  Church  of  the  Roman 
obedience — to  the  Church,  that  is,  of  Kent,  East  An¬ 
glia,  and  Wessex — the  Irish  Church  seemed  as  schis- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


309 


matic  as  the  Church  of  Wales.  Both  alike  held  aloof  chap.vh. 
from  any  definite  submission  to  the  Church  of  Rome ;  The 
both  clung  to  a  tonsure  of  their  own ;  both  kept  and  the 
Easter  at  a  season  different  from  that  of  the  rest  of  Km”dom3- 
the  Christian  world.  The  difference  sprang  simply  659-690. 
from  the  long  severance  of  the  Celtic  churches  from 
the  general  body  of  Christendom ;  but  when  the 
conversion  of  Britain  removed  the  barrier  which  iso¬ 
lated  them,  and  again  brought  them  face  to  face  with 
the  West,  its  real  origin  was  lost  in  the  fanatical  ha¬ 
tred  with  which  the  Roman  ecclesiastics  denounced 
these  usages,  and  the  no  less  fanatical  obstinacy  with 
which  the  Irish  ecclesiastics  clung  to  them.  To  the 
one  side  the  Irish  tonsure  was  the  tonsure  of  Simon 
Magus,  the  Irish  Easter  a  Jewish  Passover.  To  the 
other  the  tonsure  was  the  tonsure  of  Columba,  their 
Easter  a  tradition  of  St.  John.  So  long  as  both  ri¬ 
vals  were  threatened  with  the  triumph  of  heathendom 
under  Penda,  any  strife  between  them  seems  to  have 
been  carefully  avoided.  But  with  the  disappearance 
of  this  common  danger  a  collision  became  inevitable; 
and  the  continuance  of  both  as  equal  powers  on  Eng¬ 
lish  soil  must  have  torn  Englishmen  asunder  more 
fatally  than  any  political  parting. 

Even  in  the  years  that  preceded  his  final  struggle  AMj°ftceh 
with  Penda,  Oswiu  had  been  forced  to  watch  anxious-  strife. 
ly  the  first  signs  of  a  gathering  storm  which  was  to  end 
in  open  conflict  between  the  churches.  The  storm 
was  roused  by  the  very  step  which  he  had  taken  to 
secure  his  rule  in  Deira;  for  if  his  marriage  furthered 
the  political  union  of  the  two  northern  realms,  re¬ 
ligiously  it  added  a  new  element  of  discord  to  them. 

Eanfled  brought  with  her  the  Roman  traditions  and 


3IQ 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Benedict 

Biscop. 


the  Roman  allegiance  of  the  Church  of  Kent.'  An 
exile  in  the  south  from  her  childhood,  she  had  known 
nothing  of  Aidan  or  his  fellow-workers  in  the  north ; 
while  to  the  men  among  whom  she  lived  the  Church 
from  which  Aidan  came  seemed  simply  schismatic. 
Through  the  heathen  reaction  after  Eadwine’s  fall, 
and  through  the  reign  of  Oswald,  a  deacon  named 
James,1 2  the  sole  relic  of  the  Church  of  Paulinus,  had 
preserved  the  Roman  usage  in  Deira ;  and  he  had 
instructed  many  in  it  “  as  the  days  brightened  around 
him.”  James,  however,  might  have  lived  on  unheed¬ 
ed  had  not  the  coming  of  Eanfled  given  a  new  and 
powerful  impulse  to  the  movement.  A  Roman  party 
at  once  formed  about  her.  She  brought  with  her  a 
priest  of  the  Roman  Church  in  Kent,  and  observed 
the  Roman  Easter.  While  Oswiu,  with  his  people, 
kept  the  Easter  feast  at  the  date  fixed  by  his  Irish 
missionaries,  Eanfled,  it  was  whispered,  was  still 
fasting  for  Lent.3 

So  long,  however,  as  Aidan  lived,  the  reverence  in 
which  he  was  held  hushed  the  faint  whisper  of  com¬ 
ing  strife.  But  with  his  death  began  the  stirrings 
of  two  men  who  were  destined  to  bring  it  quickly  to 
a  head.  Born  in  the  very  year  of  Oswald’s  victory 
at  the  Hevenfeld,  Wilfrid4  had  been  sent  in  boyhood 
to  study  at  Lindisfarne.5  But  in  the  very  centre  of 


1  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  25. 

3  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  20. 

3  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  25. 

4  For  Wilfrid  we  have  a  biography  by  Eddi,  in  Historians  of  the 

Church  of  York,  ed.  Raine,  vol.  i.,  and  a  more  temperate  statement 
in  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19.  Benedict  Biscop’s  life  is  the  first  in 
Breda’s  Lives  of  the  Abbots  of  Wearmouth  and.  Yarrow  (printed  at 
end  of  Hussey’s  edition  of  Eccl.  Hist.).  5  Eddi,  cap.  2. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


3 1 1 

Irish  influence  he  felt  the  spell  of  Rome  ;  and,  young  chap,  vii. 
as  he  was,  he  resolved  to  visit  the  Imperial  City,1  The 
The  thought  sprang,  doubtless,  from  the  suggestion  and  the 
of  Eanfled,  to  whom  he  was  known,  and  who  sent  Kingdoma 
him  in  652,  the  year  after  Oswiu’s  conquest  of  Dei-  659-690. 
ra,  with  letters  of  protection  to  her  cousin,  King 
Earconberht  of  Kent.2  The  same  craving  was  stir¬ 
ring  in  the  heart  of  Benedict  Biscop,  a  thegn  of  Os¬ 
wiu’s  court;  and  the  two  young  men,  for  Benedict 
was  but  five-and-twenty  and  Wilfrid  seventeen,  met 
in  Kent,  and  crossed  the  sea  together  on  their  Ro¬ 
man  pilgrimage.  Wilfrid,  however,  remained  at  Ly¬ 
ons  on  his  way,  and  Benedict  alone  reached  Rome ; 
but  the  sight  of  the  city  kindled  in  him  a  fervor 
which  showed  itself  on  his  return  a  year  later  in 
ceaseless  preaching  against  the  Irish  usages.  Oswiu’s 
son  Alchfrid,  who  had  been  raised  to  a  share  in  his 
father’s  royalty,  was  stirred  at  last  to  vow  the  same 
pilgrimage  ; 3  and,  though  he  was  unable  to  carry  out 
his  vow,  his  accession  to  the  Roman  party  at  once 
raised  the  quarrel  of  the  churches  into  a  grave  po¬ 
litical  question.  But,  harassing  as  was  this  grow¬ 
ing  strife,  the  attention  of  Oswiu  was  absorbed  in  a 
struggle  for  life  till  the  fall  of  Penda;  and  after  the 
victory  of  the  Winwaed  all  thought  of  the  little  group 
of  ecclesiastical  rebels  who  clustered  round  Eanfled 
and  Alchfrid  was  lost  in  the  spiritual  triumph  of  the 
Church  of  Lindisfarne.  Finan  had  followed  Aidan 
as  bishop  at  Holy  Island;4  and  the  years  of  his  bish¬ 
opric  were  years  of  a  wonderful  activity.  If  Wessex 
was  won  by  a  Roman  missionary,  the  winning  of 


1  Eddi,  cap.  3. 

3  Bicda,  Vit.  Abbatum,  p.  317. 


2  Bicda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19. 

4  Bada,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  17. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap. vn.  Central  Britain,  the  reconquest  of  Essex,  the  first 
The  evangelization  even  of  the  wild  South  Saxons,  were 
amvthe  ^ie  work  of  missionaries  from  the  Celtic  Church  of 

Kingdoms.  f-]ie  n0rth. 

659-690.  But  Alchfrid  and  Eanfled  remained  steadily  at  the 
Wilfrid,  head  of  their  Roman  party ;  and  the  efforts  of  Ben¬ 
edict  Biscop  were  soon  reinforced  by  the  arrival  of  a 
worker  yet  more  dogged  and  energetic.  This  was 
Wilfrid,  whom  he  had  left  behind  in  Gaul,  and  who 
now  returned,  after  two  visits  to  Rome,  to  combat 
what  he  denounced  as  the  schism  of  Northumbria.1 
Young  as  he  was,  and  he  was  still  only  a  few  years 
over  twenty,  Wilfrid’s  energy  proved  him  a  valuable 
ally,  and  Alchfrid  set  him  as  abbot,  in  66 1,  over  a 
house  which  he  had  founded  some  years  before  at 
Ripon.  The  house  had  been  an  offshoot  from  Mel¬ 
rose,  and  Cuthbert  was  among  the  brethren  who  had 
come  from  Tweed-side  to  dwell  there;  but  to  the 
young  abbot  these  brethren  were  schismatics,  and 
he  drove  them  out.2  Their  expulsion  brought  the 
quarrel  to  a  head,  for  the  strife  was  hotly  taken  up 
by  Finan’s  successor,  Bishop  Colman  of  Lindisfarne  ; 
while  Alchfrid  summoned  to  Wilfrid’s  aid  Bishop 
Agilberct,  a  Frank  missionary  who  had  been  called, 
after  the  death  of  Birinus,  to  the  see  of  the  West 
Saxons.  There  is  no  ground,  however,  for  believing 
that  the  efforts  of  the  Roman  party  would  have  been 
more  successful  than  of  old  had  Oswiu  continued  to 
support  the  Church  of  Lindisfarne.  Hitherto  his 
support  had  been  vigorous  and  unwavering.  What¬ 
ever  might  be  the  hostility  of  his  wife  and  son,  the 


1  Eddi,  cap.  7. 


2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


313 


king  remained  true  to  the  Church  which  had  given  chap.vii. 
shelter  to  the  sons  of  Aithelfrith  in  the  days  of  their  The 
exile.  He  had  learned  to  speak  Irish  during  his  and  the 
stay  at  Hii,1  and  his  sympathy  went  with  the  Irish  Kingdoms- 
clergy  around  him ;  he  loved  Bishop  Colman,  as  his  659  69°- 
brother  Oswald  had  loved  Bishop  Aidan.2  The 
house,  indeed,  which  he  had  just  founded  at  Streo- 
nashalh  as  a  thank-offering  for  his  victory  at  the 
Winwaed  was  framed  on  the  model  of  the  house  at 
Holy  Island. 

But  a  marked  change  of  temper  was  seen  when  Synod  at 

.  .  ,T71  ...  _  .  ,  .  Whitby. 

he  summoned  a  synod  at  Whitby  m  664  tor  the  set¬ 
tlement  of  the  disputed  questions.3  The  forces,  as 
they  faced  one  another,  still  seemed  strangely  un¬ 
equal.  The  Roman  party  consisted,  as  of  old,  of 
none  but  Alchfrid,  Bishop  Agilberct,  with  his  chap¬ 
lain  Agatho,  the  priest  James,  and  Abbot  Wilfrid, 
for  Benedict  was  on  his  way  to  Rome.  On  the  other 
side  were  the  representatives  of  almost  the  whole 
Church  of  Northumbria — Bishop  Colman,  the  East- 
Saxon  bishop  Cedd  (who  acted  as  interpreter),  the 
brethren  of  Lindisfarne,  Abbess  Hild,  and  the  breth¬ 
ren  and  sisters  of  the  very  house  in  which  the  synod 
was  gathered.  Above  all,  the  Irish  party  looked  for 
aid  to  Oswiu  himself,  who  presided  over  the  mixed 
assembly  of  clergy  and  thegns.  His  first  words, 
however,  showed  the  drift  of  the  king’s  policy.  The 
disputed  questions  he  submitted  to  the  judgment  of 
the  council ;  but  he  pressed  earnestly  for  uniformity, 
and  his  resolve  to  obtain  it  was  seen  in  his  signifi- 

1  “Oswiu  .  .  .  illorum  etiam  lingua  optime  imbutus  ”  (Baeda,  Hist. 

Eccl.  iii.  25). 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  26. 


3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  25. 


3H 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Its  issues. 


cant  interference  at  the  close  of  the  debate.  Colman 
pleaded  hotly  for  the  Irish  fashion  of  the  tonsure 
and  for  the  Irish  time  of  keeping  Easter.  Wilfrid’s 
plea  for  the  Roman,  learned  and  elaborate  as  was 
its  form,  condensed  itself  in  the  single  argument 
which  he  saw  had  weight  with  the  king.  “You 
fight,”  he  said,  “  against  the  whole  world.” 1  Still 
the  debate  went  on.  The  one  disputant  appealed 
to  the  authority  of  Columba,  the  other  to  that  of  St. 
Peter.  “You  own,”  cried  the  king,  at  last,  to  Col¬ 
man,  “  that  Christ  gave  to  Peter  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  Has  he  given  such  power  to 
Columba  ?”  The  bishop  could  but  answer  “  No.” 
“  Then  will  I  rather  obey  the  porter  of  heaven,”  said 
Oswiu,  “  lest,  when  I  reach  its  gates,  he  who  has  the 
keys  in  his  keeping  turn  his  back  on  me,  and  there 
be  none  to  open.”  The  humorous  form  of  Oswiu’s 
decision  could  not  hide  its  importance ;  and  the 
synod  had  no  sooner  broken  up  than  Colman,  fol¬ 
lowed  by  the  whole  of  the  Irish-born  brethren  and 
thirty  of  their  English  fellows,  forsook  the  see  of 
Aidan  and  sailed  away  from  Hii. 

It  is  possible  that  lesser  political  motives  may  have 
partly  swayed  Oswiu  in  his  decision,  for  the  revival 
of  Mercia  had  left  him  but  the  alliance  of  Kent  in 
the  south,  and  this  victory  of  the  Kentish  Church 
would  draw  tighter  the  bonds  which  linked  together 
the  two  powers.  But  we  may  fairly  credit  him  with 
a  larger  statesmanship.  Trivial  in  fact  as  were  the 
actual  points  of  difference  which  parted  the  Roman 
Church  from  the  Irish,  the  question  to  which  com- 


1  “Contra  totum  orbem  .  .  .  pugnant”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  25). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


315 


munion  Northumbria  should  belong  was,  as  we  have  chap.vm. 
seen,  of  immense  moment  to  the  after -fortunes  of  The 
England.  It  was  not  merely  that,  as  Wilfrid  said,  and  the 
to  fight  against  Rome  was  to  fight  against  the  world.  Kmgdom3- 
Had  England,  indeed,  clung  to  the  Irish  Church,  it  659-690. 
must  have  remained  spiritually  isolated  from  the 
bulk  of  Western  Christendom.  Fallen  as  Rome 
might  be  from  its  older  greatness,  it  preserved  the 
traditions  of  civilization,  of  letters  and  art  and  law. 

Its  faith  still  served  as  a  bond  which  held  together 
the  nations  that  sprang  from  the  wreck  of  the  Em¬ 
pire.  To  repulse  Rome  was  to  condemn  England 
to  isolation.  But  grave  as  such  considerations  were, 
they  were  of  little  weight  beside  the  influence  which 
Oswiu’s  decision  had  on  the  very  unity  of  the  Eng¬ 
lish  race.  The  issue  of  the  synod  not  only  gave 
England  a  share  in  the  religious  unity  of  Western 
Christendom ;  it  gave  her  a  religious  unity  at  home. 
However  dimly  such  thoughts  may  have  presented 
themselves  to  Oswiu’s  mind,  it  was  the  instinct  of  a 
statesman  that  led  him  to  set  aside  the  love  and 
gratitude  of  his  youth,  and  to  secure  the  religious 
oneness  of  England  in  the  Synod  of  Whitby. 

From  the  Channel  to  the  Firth  of  Forth  the  Eng-  Thepri- 

.  tfiacy . 

lish  Church  was  now  a  single  religious  body  within 
the  obedience  of  Rome,  and  the  time  had  come  for 
carrying  out  those  plans  of  organization  which  Rome 
had  conceived  from  the  first  moment  of  Augustine’s 
landing.  The  actual  scheme  of  ecclesiastical  gov¬ 
ernment,  indeed,  which  Gregory  had  then  devised 
had  broken  down  before  the  stress  of  facts.  Of  his 
two  contemplated  archbishoprics,  York  made  as  yet 
no  claim  to  a  primacy,  while  London  gave  way  to 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


316 

chap. vii.  the  claims  of  Canterbury  as  the  see  of  Augustine, 
The  as  the  mother  church  of  Britain;  above  all,  as  the 
and  the  bishopric  of  the  one  realm  which  had  from  the  first 
Kingdoms.  remajneci  Christian — the  kingdom  of  Kent.  Canter- 
659-690.  bury  had  become  the  natural  centre  of  ecclesiastical 
life,  now  that  the  life  called  for  such  a  centre  for  its 
development.  The  choice  of  its  primate  thus  be¬ 
came  all-important ;  and  when  the  death  of  Arch¬ 
bishop  Deusdedit,  in  the  plague  of  664,  left  the  see 
of  Canterbury  vacant,  Oswiu  as  still  exercising  some 
nominal  supremacy  over  Britain,  and  Ecgberht  of 
Kent  as  king  of  the  actual  diocese,  joined  in  select¬ 
ing  a  priest  named  Wighard  for  the  post  and  in 
sending  him  for  consecration  to  Rome.  The  selec- 
tion  of  Wighard,  following  on  that  of  Deusdedit,  was 
in  itself  a  notable  step  towards  the  nationalization 
of  the  Church,  for  Wighard,  like  his  predecessor  in 
the  primacy,  was  an  Englishman.  Though  seventy 
years  had  passed  since  Augustine’s  arrival,  neither 
he  nor  the  Roman  missionaries  who  followed  him 
— Laurentius,  Mellitus,  Justus,  or  Honorius — had  ac¬ 
quired  the  English  tongue ;  and  throughout  their 
primacy  the  Kentish  kings  had  been  forced,  like 
Aithelberht,  to  gather  what  they  could  of  their 
teaching  through  the  means  of  interpreters.  It 
marked  the  rise  of  a  keener  sense  of  nationality 
when  Ecgberht,  with  Oswiu’s  assent,  resolved  to 
have  “  a  bishop  of  his  own  race  and  his  own 
tongue.”1 


1  “  Cupiens  eum  sibi  Romae  ordinari  episcopum,  quatenus  suae 
gentis  et  linguae  habens  antistitem,  tanto  perfectius,  cum  subjectis 
sibi  populis,  vel  verbis  imbueretur  fidei  vel  mysteriis,  quanto  haec 
non  per  interpretem,  sed  per  cognati  et  contribulis  viri  linguam  si- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  T  n 

0  1  7 

Wighard,  however,  died  of  plague  on  his  arrival  at  chap.vii. 
Rome,  and  Pope  Vitalian,  interpreting  the  request  of  The 
the  kings  for  the  consecration  of  the  primate  they  andthe 
had  selected  as  a  request  to  find  them  a  primate*  1  in  Kingdom& 
any  case,  selected  in  Wighard  s  place  a  Neapolitan  659~690- 
abbot  of  African  race,  named  Hadrian.  Hadrian,  Theodore. 
however,  refused  the  offer  of  so  distant  a  see,2  and  it 
was  with  some  difficulty  that  the  Pope  at  last  found 
an  archbishop  in  Theodore,  an  Eastern  monk  born 
at  Tarsus  in  Cilicia — a  man  famous  for  his  learning! 
and  piety,  but  who  had  already  reached  the  age  of 
sixty-six.  Aged,  however,  as  he  was,  Theodore  was 
kept  four  months  in  Rome  till  his  Eastern  tonsure 
could  be  superseded  by  a  tonsure  in  the  correct 
Roman  fashion ;  and  the  characteristic  caution  of  the 
Roman  Court  was  seen  in  its  despatch  of  Hadrian 
as  his  companion,  lest  any  shade  of  Greek  hetero¬ 
doxy  should  be  introduced  by  the  new  primate  into 
Britain.3  The  result  of  these  delays,  and  of  a  long 
detention  in  Gaul  during  his  journey,  was  that  The¬ 
odore  did  not  land  in  Kent  till  the  May  of  669. 

The  Britain  which  he  found  on  his  arrival  had  Mercia 
become  in  the  interval  a  very  different  country  from  mJ/here 
the  Britain  which  we  last  surveyed  after  the  battle 
of  the  Winwaed.  Northumbria,  which  then  seemed 

mul  manumque  susciperet  ”  (Breda,  Vit.  Abbatum  ;  Hussey’s  Breda, 
p.  317).  The  “contribulis  ”  is  emphatic  too,  for  Deusdedit  had  been 
a  West  Saxon. 

1  See  Vitalian’s  letter.  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  iii.  1 1 1,  1 12, 
with  the  editor’s  note. 

2  “  Antistitem,”  says  Vitalian  to  Oswiu,  “minime  valuimus  nunc 
reperire  pro  longinquitate  itineris.” 

3  “  Ut  ei  doctrinal  cooperator  existens,  diligenter  adtenderet  ne 
quid  ille  contrarium  veritati  fidei,  Grrecorum  more,  in  ecclesiam  cui 
prreesset,  introduceret  ”  (Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  1). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


318 

chap. vii.  supreme  over  the  whole  English  race,  had  now  re- 
The  tired  within  her  own  bounds  across  the  Humber, 
and  the  and  retained  none  of  her  conquests  to  the  south 
Kingdoms.  0f  ^hat  ,qver  save  the  territory  of  the  Lindiswaras. 
659-690.  Mercia,  on  the  other  hand,  which  then  seemed  ut¬ 
terly  destroyed,  had  risen  into  a  greatness  it  had 
never  known  before.  If  it  left  for  a  time  Lindsey 
to  Northumbria,  it  reft  from  that  kingdom  the  dis¬ 
trict  south  of  the  Mersey,  and  with  it  at  least  the 
site  and  port  of  Chester.1  In  Mid-Britain,  East  An¬ 
glia  may  still  have  held  aloof  from  Wulfhere,  but  in 
all  other  quarters  the  realm  of  Penda  seems  to  have 
been  quickly  restored.  Even  the  territory  of  the 
Hwiccas,  which  had  been  the  spoil  of  the  victory  at 
Cirencester,  again  found  itself  in  the  Mercian  grasp; 
for  Wulfhere’s  rule  was  not  only  owned  in  the  Sev¬ 
ern  valley,  but  embraced  the  lower  valley  of  the 
Wye.  In  this  region,  our  Herefordshire,  Wulfhere 
set  his  brother  Merewald  as  an  under-king.2  But 
he  did  more  than  restore  his  father’s  realm.  The 
renewed  activity  of  the  West  Saxons,  which  had 
shown  itself  in  their  recent  victories  over  the  Brit¬ 
ons  on  their  southwestern  frontier,  may  have  led  to 
some  fresh  attempts  to  recover  the  lost  territory  of 
the  Hwiccas ;  but  whatever  was  the  cause  of  the  con¬ 
flict  between  Cenwealh’s  host  and  that  of  Wulfhere 
in  661,  it  ended  in  so  decisive  a  victory  for  the  Mer- 


1  We  have  no  record  of  this  conquest  or  of  its  date ;  but  from 
this  time  we  find  Cheshire  and  the  country  as  far  as  the  Mersey  in 
Mercian  hands. 

8  “  Germanus  vero  ipsius,  Westan-Hecanorum  rex,  sanctus  Mere- 
waldus  ”  (Flor.  Wore.  Geneal.  i.  265).  The  Hwiccas  were  in  the  same 
way  ruled  by  subreguli ;  in  the  next  Mercian  reign  Oshere  is 
“  Hwicciorum  subregulus”  (Flor.  Wore.  Geneal.  i.  239). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


319 


cians  that  their  ravages  extended  into  the  heart  of  chap.  vn. 
Wessex  as  far  as  Ashdown.1  It  was  probably  this  The 
triumph  which  enabled  Wulfhere  to  carry  his  arms  and  the 
into  the  valley  of  the  Thames.  To  the  eastward,  Kmgdoms- 
the  East  Saxons  and  London  came  to  own  his  su-  659~690- 
premacy;2  while  southward  he  pushed  across  the 
river  and  over  Surrey,  which  we  find  governed  by 
an  under-king  of  his  appointment,3  into  Sussex.  The 
wild  Saxon  tribe  which  was  sheltered  by  the  Weald 
may  have  sought  his  overlordship  as  a  protection 
from  the  more  pressing  attacks  of  the  West  Saxons; 
in  661,  at  any  rate,  their  king,  zEthelwalch,  was  bap¬ 
tized  in  Wulfhere ’s  presence  and  by  his  persuasion  ;4 
and  his  submission  was  rewarded  by  a  gift  of  two 
outlying  settlements  of  the  Jutes — the  Isle  of  Wight 
and  the  lands  of  the  Meonwara  along  the  South¬ 
ampton  Water,  which  we  must  suppose  had  been 
previously  torn  from  Wessex  by  the  arms  of  the 
Mercian  king. 

The  Mercian  supremacy,  which  thus  reached  from  Th^dore 
the  Humber  to  the  Channel,  and  stretched  as  far  Britain. 
westward  as  the  Wye,  while  on  the  eastern  coast 
East  Anglia  and  Kent,  though  still  independent,  lay 
helpless  and  isolated  in  its  grasp,  was  thus  the  main 
political  fact  in  Britain  when  Theodore  landed  on  its 
shores.  He  came  with  a  clear  and  distinct  aim — 
the  organization  of  the  English  dioceses,  the  group- 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  661. 

3  Wini  bought  the  bishopric  of  London  from  Wulfhere  (Breda, 
Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7).  For  Essex,  see  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  30. 

3  Malmesbury,  Gest.  Pontif.  ed.  Migne,  col.  1515.  For  the  Chert  - 
sey  charters,  see  article  on  “  Erkenwald,”  by  Stubbs,  in  Dictionary"  of 
Christian  Biography,  vol.  ii. 

4  Bteda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  13. 


320 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap. vii.  ing  of  these  subordinate  centres  round  the  see  of 
The  Canterbury,  and  the  bringing  the  Church  which 
and1  the  was  thus  organized  into  a  fixed  relation  to  Western 
Kingdoms.  Christendom  through  its  obedience  to  the  see  of 
659-690.  Rome.  With  this  purpose  he  spent  the  three  years 
which  followed  his  arrival,  from  669  to  672,  in  jour¬ 
neying  through  the  whole  island.1  Wherever  he 
went  he  secured  obedience  to  Rome  by  enforcing 
the  Roman  observance  of  Easter  and  the  other 
Roman  rites,  while  his  very  presence  brought  about 
for  himself  a  recognition  of  his  primacy  over  the 
nation  at  large.  As  yet  no  archbishop  had  crossed 
the  bounds  of  Kent,  and  to  the  rest  of  Britain  the 
primate  at  Canterbury  must  have  seemed  a  mere 
provincial  prelate  like  the  rest.  But  the  presence 
of  Theodore  in  Northumbria,  in  Mercia,  in  Wessex 
alike,  the  welcome  he  everywhere  received,  the  rev¬ 
erence  with  which  he  was  everywhere  listened  to, 
at  once  raised  his  position  into  a  national  one.2 
“  He,”  says  Baeda,  “was  the  first  of  the  archbishops 
whom  the  whole  English  Church  consented  to 
obey;”3  and  everywhere  he  went  he  asserted  this 
new  position  of  the  primacy  by  an  ordering,  though, 
as  we  shall  see,  only  a  preliminary  ordering,  of  the 
English  dioceses. 

First  or-  Some  ordering  was  absolutely  needful.  So  great 

dertng  of  ^  J  ° 

dioceses,  a  confusion  had  been  produced  by  the  contest  be¬ 
tween  the  churches  that  to  hot  partisans  on  either 

1  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2:  “  Peragrata  insula  tota,  quaquaversum 
Anglorum  gentes  morabantur.” 

2  “  Nam  et  libentissime  ab  omnibus  suscipiebatur  atque  audieba- 
tur  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2). 

3  “  Isque  primus  erat  in  archiepiscopis,  cui  omnis  Anglorum  Ec- 
clesia  manus  dare  consentiret  ”  (Bada,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2). 


21 


322 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  vii.  side  some  of  the  English  bishops  seemed  no  bishops 
The  at  all;  and  Wilfrid,  when  named  to  the  see  of  York, 
and  the  had  cast  an  open  slur  on  the  validity  of  his  fellow- 
Kmgdoms.  prelates’  orders  by  crossing  over  the  Channel  to  seek 
659-680.  consecration  from  the  bishops  of  Gaul.1  Nor  was 
this  the  worst.  Two  of  the  English  dioceses,  those 
of  Wessex  and  Northumbria,  had  for  some  years  seen 
the  presence  of  no  bishop  at  all.  In  Wessex,  King 
Cenwealh  had  quarrelled  with  Bishop  Agilberct, 
driven  him  as  a  foreigner  from  the  realm,  and  set 
Wini  as  bishop  in  his  stead.  Then  in  666  he  had 
in  turn  driven  Wini  from  his  see,  and  left  Wessex 
without  any  bishop  at  all.2  On  the  other  hand, 
Wilfrid,  who  had  gone  to  Gaul  for  his  consecration, 
had  delayed  his  return  so  long  that  Oswiu  set  Cead- 
da  as  bishop  in  his  place ;  and  after  three  years’  re¬ 
tirement  at  Ripon  he  had  withdrawn  to  the  south, 
and  was  actually  administering  the  vacant  diocese 
of  Kent  when  Theodore  arrived  there.3  Wilfrid, 
however,  was  now  placed  in  his  northern  diocese, 
and  Leutherius,  a  nephew  of  Agilberct,  was  drawn 
from  Gaul  to  fill  the  bishopric  of  the  West  Saxons,4 
while  Theodore  solved  the  vexed  question  of  their 
disputed  orders  by  reconsecrating  Bisi  as  bishop 
over  East  Anglia,  and  Ceadda  as  Bishop  of  Mercia.5 
Wini  remained  at  London  in  his  diocese  of  the 
East  Saxons,  which  he  had  bought  from  Wulfhere 
in  666 and  the  placing  of  his  own  under-bishop, 

1  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  28. 

2  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7. 

3  Eddi,  Life  of  Wilfrid,  cap.  14;  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2. 

4  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7. 

5  Bieda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2,  3.  “  Denuo  catholica  ratione  consum- 

mavit  ”  (Flor.  Wore.  a.  673).  *  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  7. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


323 

Putta,  at  Rochester  completed  Theodore’s  first  or-  chap.  vii. 
dering  of  the  English  episcopate.  The 

In  the  autumn  of  673  this  earlier  work  was  com-  ^the 
pleted  by  the  calling  together  of  these  bishops,  with  KingdQms' 
their  leading  clergy,  in  a  council  at  Hertford.1  The  659-690. 
decrees  of  this  council  formed  a  further  step  in  The-  Council 
odore’s  work  of  settlement,  for  by  them  each  bishop  lh,t^onL 
with  his  clergy  was  restricted  within  the  limits  of 
his  own  diocese,  and  the  free  wandering  of  the  earlier 
English  mission  bishops  over  the  face  of  the  country 
was  brought  to  an  end.2  A  yet  more  important 
canon  enacted  that  this  synod  at  Hertford  should  be 
but  the  first  of  a  series  of  such  synods,  and  that  the 
bishops  should  meet  each  year  at  the  close  of  July 
in  a  spot  which  bore  the  name  of  Cloveshoe.3  It  is 
as  the  first  of  these  assemblies  that  the  Council  of 
Hertford  is  so  important  in  our  history.  The  syn¬ 
ods  to  which  its  canons  gave  birth  not  only  exert¬ 
ed  an  important  influence  on  the  Church  itself,  but 
they  exerted  a  yet  more  powerful  influence  upon 
the  nation  at  large.  At  every  important  juncture 
the  new  bishops  gathered  round  their  primate  from 
every  quarter  of  England,  to  take  counsel  and  frame 
canons  for  the  rule  of  the  Church  at  large.  They 
met,  not  as  Northumbrian  or  Mercian  or  Saxon 
bishops,  but  as  bishops  of  a  national  Church.  These 
meetings  were,  in  fact,  the  first  of  our  national  gath¬ 
erings  for  general  legislation ;  for  it  was  at  a  much 


1  Wini,  however,  was  not  present  at  this  council. 

1  For  Council  of  Hertford,  see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  vol. 
iii.  pp.  118-122. 

3  For  the  various  localities  to  which  this  name  has  been  assigned, 
see  Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  122,  note. 


324 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


charvii.  later  time  that  the  Wise  Men  of  Wessex,  or  North- 
The  umbria,  or  Mercia  learned  to  come  together  in  the 
and  the  Witenagemote  of  all  England.  The  synods  which 
Kingdoms.  Theodore  convened  as  religiously  representative  of 
659-690.  the  whole  English  nation  led  the  way  by  their  ex¬ 
ample  to  our  national  Parliament ;  while  the  canons 
which  these  councils  enacted,  though  carefully  avoid¬ 
ing  all  direct  intermeddling  with  secular  matters, 
pointed  the  way  to  a  national  system  of  law.  How 
strong  an  influence  this  work  would  exert  on  Eng¬ 
lish  feeling,  the  next  hundred  years  were  to  show. 
It  was  in  vain  that  during  that  period  state  after 
state  strove  to  build  up  the  fabric  of  a  national 
unity  by  the  power  of  the  sword.  But  in  spite  of 
their  failure  the  drift  towards  unity  grew  more  and 
more  irresistible.  If  England  could  not  find  its 
national  life  in  the  supremacy  of  Northumbria  or 
Mercia,  it  found  it  in  the  Church ;  and  amid  the 
wreck  of  kingdoms  the  power  of  the  Church  grew 
steadily  greater,  because  the  Church  alone  expressed 
the  national  consciousness  of  the  English  people.1 
The  school  Jn  the  journeys  of  these  three  years  throughout 
bury.  Britain,  Theodore  had  found  a  companion  and  fel¬ 
low-worker  in  his  friend  Hadrian.  But  he  found  in 
him  a  fellow-worker  in  more  than  this  task  of  organ¬ 
ization.  Both  of  the  friends  were  famous  for  their 
knowledge  as  well  as  their  piety,2  and  one  of  their 
earliest  efforts  seems  to  have  been  to  gather  a  school 

1  For  the  work  of  Theodore,  and  the  character  of  the  new  English 
Church,  see  Stubbs,  Const.  Hist.  vol.  i.  chap.  viii. 

5  The  Pope,  in  a  synodical  letter,  calls  Theodore  “archiepiscopum 
et  philosophum.”  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  140. 

“  Literis  sacris  simul  et  saecularibus  abundantur  ambo  erant  in- 
structi  ”  (Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


325 


at  Canterbury.  As  yet  the  knowledge  which  came  chap.vit. 
in  the  train  of  the  new  faith  had  filtered  into  Britain  The 
through  the  wandering  Irishmen,  half-scholars,  half-  and  the 
missionaries,  who  settled  in  lonely  spots,  and  then  Kingdoms 
eked  out  their  living  by  the  learners  they  drew  659-690. 
about  them.1  Such  teaching,  however,  was  neces¬ 
sarily  wanting  in  permanence ;  and  a  new  and  set¬ 
tled  form  was  given  to  English  education  by  the  es¬ 
tablishment  of  such  a  school  as  that  of  Canterbury. 
Though  its  main  teaching  was  in  subjects  that  re¬ 
lated  to  the  knowledge  either  of  the  Bible  or  of  the 
services  of  the  Church,  yet  this  scheme  of  education 
proved  broad  enough  to  embrace  the  astronomy,  the 
arithmetic,  and  the  poetic  art  of  the  time,  as  well  as 
a  knowledge  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  tongues.  In 
its  Greek  teaching,  indeed,  the  school  was  fortunate, 
for  the  knowledge  of  Greek  was  fast  fading  away 
from  the  Western  world;  and  where  it  still  lingered, 
instruction  in  it  had  died  down  into  the  mastering 
of  a  list  of  words,  without  knowledge  of  its  grammar 
or  its  literature.  But  Greek  was  the  native  tongue 
of  Theodore  ;  and  though  Hadrian  was  by  birth  an 
African,  he  had  lived  long  enough  in  Southern  Italy, 
where  Greek  was  still  a  living  tongue,  to  be  as  skilled 
a  master  of  it  as  of  Latin.2  How  thorough  their 
teaching  in  both  languages  was  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  sixty  years  afterwards  Baeda  found  men 
who  had  been  trained  in  the  school  of  Canterbury 


1  Thus  Maidulf,  “  deficientibus  necessariis  scholares  in  discipula- 
tum  accepit,  ut  eorum  liberalitate  tenuitatem  victus  corrigeret.” 
Malm.  Vit.  Aldhelmi  (Anglia  Sacra,  vol.  ii.  p.  3). 

2  “  Grsecae  pariter  et  Latin®  linguae  peritissimus  ”  ( Baeda,  H  ist.  Eccl. 
iv.  1). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


326 

chap. vii.  who  knew  Latin  and  Greek  as  perfectly  as  their 
The  own  English  tongue.1 2 

and  the  But  the  influence  of  this  school  on  the  develop- 
Kingdoms.  ment  0f  English  intellect  is  shown  more  vividly  by 
659-690.  the  fact  that  from  it  our  written  literature — the  litera- 
Eaidheim.  ture,  that  is,  of  the  English  in  Britain — took  its  birth. 
With  one  scholar,  Eddi,  who  followed  Wilfrid  to 
York,  began  the  prose  literature  of  Northern  Brit¬ 
ain  ;  with  another,  Ealdhelm,  began,  at  an  even  ear¬ 
lier  date,  the  whole  literature  of  the  South.  Eald¬ 
helm  '  was  a  kinsman  of  the  royal  house  of  Wessex, 
and  probably  a  son  of  one  of  the  West-Saxon  kings. 
If,  as  seems  likely,  he  was  born  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventh  century,  he  must  have  already  reached  man¬ 
hood  when  the  school  was  set  up  at  Canterbury; 
and  his  earlier  training  was  due  to  Maidulf,  an  Irish 
wanderer  who  had  sought  a  spot  for  his  hermitage 
in  the  woodlands  of  Northern  Wessex,  and  who  was 
gathering  scholars  there  from  among  its  thegns. 
But  it  was  from  Hadrian  and  Theodore  that  Eald¬ 
helm  drew  the  intellectual  impulse  which  he  com¬ 
municated  to  the  scholars  who  gathered  round  him 
when  he  returned  to  his  home  at  Malmesbury.  He 
had  become  a  master  of  all  the  knowledge  of  his 
day,  and  the  rising  scholar-world  of  Kent  and  North¬ 
umbria  welcomed  his  Latin  poems  and  prose,  where 
a  real  quickness  of  wit  and  perception  of  natural  beau¬ 
ty  struggled  with  a  fatal  luxuriance  of  metaphor  and 

1  “  Indicio  est  quod  usque  hodie  supersunt  de  eorum  discipulis, 
qui  Latinam  Graecamque  linguam  aeque  ut  propriam  in  qua  nati 
sunt,  norunt  ”  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  2). 

2  Ealdhelm’s  Life  by  Fabricius  is  printed  by  Giles,  Opera  Aldhelmi, 
p.  354 ;  that  by  William  of  Malmesbury  forms  the  fifth  book  of  his 
Gesta  Pontificum,  in  Wharton,  Anglia  Sacra,  vol.  ii. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


32  7 


rhetoric.1 2  But  to  Wessex  itself  Ealdhelm  was  more 
than  a  mere  scholar.  He  was  the  first  singer  of  his 
race.  /Elf red  loved  to  tell  how  Ealdhelm  won  men 
to  heed  sacred  things  by  taking  stand  as  a  gleeman 
and  singing  English  songs  on  a  bridge.3  The  songs 
of  Ealdhelm  led  the  way  in  that  upgrowth  of  popular 
poetry  which  was  soon  to  fill  the  land  with  English 
verse.  Creed,  prayer,  riddle,  allegory,  acrostic,  Bible 
story  and  saint  story,  hero  tale  and  battle  tale,  prov¬ 
erb  and  moral  saw,  the  longing  of  the  exile,  the  toil 
of  the  seaman,  the  warning  of  the  grave,  passed  alike 
into  rime.  It  was  with  an  ever-growing  stock  of 
ballads  that  the  gleeman  trolled  his  way  from  fair 
to  fair.  A  book  of  English  songs  was  the  prize  of 
/Elfred’s  childhood ;  English  songs  were  the  first 
study  of  his  children ;  “  vain  songs  and  legends  of 
heathendom  ”  were  played  by  Dunstan  in  youth 
upon  his  harp.  A  mass  of  poetic  romance  grew 
up  round  the  later  English  kings ;  and  the  story  of 
/Ethelstan  and  Eadgar  has  been  all  but  lost  in  the 
ballad -growth  which  the  chroniclers  of  the  twelfth 
century  melted  down  into  prose. 

The  district  in  which  Ealdhelm  taught  and  sansr 
was  one  which  had  but  lately  passed  into  the  hands 


1  Malmesbury,  Life  of  Aldhelm  (Anglia  Sacra,  vol.  ii.  p.  7),  says, 
“  Grseci  involute,  Romani  splendide,  Angli  pompatice  dictare  so- 
lent,”  and  credits  Ealdhelm  with  combining  the  merits  of  the  three. 
“  Involute  ”  and  “  pompatice  ”  fairly  describe  a  writer  who  is  utterly 
carried  away  by  the  new  charms  of  style. 

2  Malmesbury,  Life  of  Aldhelm  (Anglia  Sacra,  vol.  ii.  p.  4) :  “  Nati- 
vae,  quoque  linguae  non  negligebat  carmina.”  He  quotes  the  gleeman 
story  from  /Elfred’s  Hand-book,  “manualem  librum  regis  HJlfredi.” 

“  Commemorat  Htlfredus  carmen  triviale,  quod  adhuc  vulgo  canti- 
tatur,  Aldhelmum  fecisse so  that  Aldhelm’s  songs  were  still  pop¬ 
ular  in  the  twelfth  century. 


CHAP.  VII. 

the 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

65SM390. 


Conquest 
of  the 
Avon 
basin. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


328 

chap. vii.  of  the  West  Saxons.  We  have  seen  that  in  their 
The  early  conquests  of  the  Marlborough  Downs,  they 
and  the  had  been  barred  from  further  progress  by  a  forest 
Kingdoms,  that  then  filled  the  upper  basin  of  the  Avon.  This 
659-690.  woodland  was  in  itself  a  northern  continuation  of 
the  great  Selwood ;  it  extended  even  in  the  time  of 
Charles  the  First  as  far  as  Cricklade ;  at  the  time  of 


SOUTH-WESTERN  BRITAIN 

Foman  namti  GLEAVUM 
English  ••  DEORHAM 
Modem  •*  A  mcsbury 
English  Miles. 

0  ^  10  20  qo  40 

■Stanford's  Geographical  Estabf 


our  story  it  still  covered  the  site  of  Malmesbury ; 1 
and  the  town  of  Devizes,  on  the  brow  of  the  hill  look- 
'  ing  down  over  the  Avon  basin,  probably  preserves 
in  Latin  form  the  rendering  of  some  English  name 
like  “Mere”  or  the  “  Borderspot,”from  which  this  for- 

1  “  Nemoris  amcenitate  quod  tunc  temporis  immensum  eo  loco  suc- 
creverat  captus,  eremeticam  exercuit  ”  (  Maidulfus ).  Malmesbury, 
Life  of  Aldhelm  (Anglia  Sacra,  vol.  ii.  p.  3). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


329 


est  ran  unbroken  westward  as  far  as  the  outskirts  of 
Bath.1  Though  the  victory  of  Deorham  at  last  car¬ 
ried  West-Saxon  territory  round  the  northern  and 
western  borders  of  this  British  tract,  and  left  it  run¬ 
ning  up  like  a  wedge  into  English  soil,  it  was  still 
saved  for  a  while  from  annexation  by  the  fall  of 
Ceawlin,  the  outbreak  of  anarchy  among  his  people, 
and  the  fatal  blows  which  fell  upon  the  West  Saxons 
at  the  hands  of  Eadwine  and  Penda.  But  the  loss 
of  the  territory  of  the  Hwiccas,  the  loss  of  the  Sev¬ 
ern  valley  and  the  Cotswolds,  forced  them  to  fresh 
action  in  this  quarter.  Barred  from  any  further  ad¬ 
vance  to  the  north,  they  saw  even  their  progress 
westward  threatened  by  the  presence  of  Mercia  on 
the  lower  Avon ;  and  it  was  as  much  to  preserve 
their  one  remaining  field  of  conquest  as  to  compen¬ 
sate  for  the  retreat  of  their  frontier  in  other  quarters 
that  Cenwealh  marched  on  this  northernmost  fast¬ 
ness  of  Dyvnaint. 

In  652,  a  battle  at  Bradford  on  the  Avon  made 
the  forest  track  his  own;2  while  a  fresh  fight  with 
the  Welsh,  six  years  later,  in  658,  at  a  place  called 
the  Pens,  cleared  them  from  the  ground  along  the 
upper  Parret.3  It  must  have  been  soon  after  this 
conquest  that  Maidulf,  an  Irish  scholar  monk,4  set 
up  his  hermitage  in  the  forest  tract  which  had  been 
torn  from  the  Britons,  and  drew  around  him  the  first 
scholars  of  Wessex.  Ealdhelm,  as  we  have  seen, 

1  Guest,  “  Boundaries  of  the  Welsh  and  English  Races  after  the 

Conquest  of  Bath,”  Archaeol.  Journal,  vol.  xvi.  pp.  112-116. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  652. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  658. 

*  “  Eruditione  philosophus,  professione  monachus.”  Malmesbury, 
Life  of  Aldhelm  (Anglia  Sacra,  vol.  ii.  p.  3). 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms, 

659  690. 


Eald¬ 
helm' s 
work. 


33° 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap. vii.  Was  the  most  famous  outcome  of  this  school;  but 
The  he  no  sooner  succeeded  Maidulf  as  abbot  of  the 
ancTthe  little  township  which  was  growing  up  round  that 
Kingdoms,  teacher’s  school  and  church,  and  which  still  pre- 
659-690.  serves  his  memory  in  its  name  of  “  Maidulf’s  burh,” 
or  Malmesbury,  than  he  became  a  centre,  not  only 
of  intellectual,  but  of  religious  and  industrial,  activity 
in  his  neighborhood.  In  the  heart  of  the  great 
woodland  which  stretched  from  Malmesbury  to  the 
Channel,  he  planted  four  new  germs  of  social  life  in 
the  monasteries  which  he  established  at  Bradford  on 
the  Avon ;  at  Frome,  on  the  little  river  which  bears 
that  name  ;  at  Sherborne,  on  the  borders  of  the  forest 
country  through  which  the  Dorsaetas  must  have 
been  still  at  this  time  pushing  their  way ;  and  at 
Wareham,  on  the  coast  beside  Poole — a  point  which 
shows  that  these  invaders  had  already  advanced  at 
least  thus  far  towards  the  west.  The  churches  he 
raised  at  these  spots  are  noteworthy  as  the  first  in¬ 
stances  of  building  which  we  meet  with  in  Wessex. 
But  they  had  nothing  of  the  rudeness  of  early  work ; 
architecturally,  indeed,  they  were  superior  to  the 
famous  churches  which  Benedict  Biscop  was  raising 
at  this  time  by  the  banks  of  the  Wear.1  So  masterly 
was  their  construction  that  Ealdhelm’s  churches  at 
Malmesbury  and  Sherborne  wrere  the  only  churches 
of  this  early  time  that  were  spared  by  the  Norman 
architects  after  the  conquest',  while  the  church 
which  he  erected  on  the  scene  of  Cenwealh’s  victory 
at  Bradford  on  Avon  stands  in  almost  perfect  pres¬ 
ervation  to-day. 

1  Freeman,  “  King  Ine,”  Somersetshire  Archaeological  Proceed¬ 
ings,  1874,  vol.  xx.  p.  31. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


331 


While  Ealdhelm  was  thus  riming  and  building  chap.vii. 
in  Wessex,  Theodore  himself  was  steadily  carrying  The 
out  the  second  part  of  his  plans  for  the  organization  and  the 
of  the  Church.  In  the  Council  of  Hertford  the  ques-  Kingdoms- 
tion  of  the  increase  of  the  episcopate  had  been  de-  659  69°- 
bated,  but  left  without  formal  decision.1  From  what  The 

•  •  •  English 

we  find  afterwards,  it  is  probable  that  this  absence  dioceses. 
of  any  resolve  on  the  part  of  the  council  was  owing 
to  the  reluctance  of  most  of  the  bishops  concerned 
to  consent  to  the  division  of  their  dioceses.  But 
Theodore’s  purpose  remained  unshaken,  and  the 
council  had  no  sooner  closed  than  he  began  to 
carry  out  his  plans.  The  shape  which  his  present 
work  took,  like  the  shape  of  his  earlier  work,  was 
determined  by  the  previous  history  of  the  English 
people.  The  conquest  of  the  Continent  had  been 
wrought  either  by  races  such  as  the  Goths,  who 
were  already  Christian ;  or  by  heathens  such  as  the 
Franks,  who  bowed  to  the  Christian  faith  of  the  na¬ 
tions  they  conquered.  To  this  oneness  of  religion 
between  the  German  invaders  of  the  Empire  and 
their  Roman  subjects  was  owing  the  preservation  of 
all  that  survived  of  the  Roman  world.  The  Church 
everywhere  remained  untouched.  The  Christian 
bishop  became  the  defender  of  the  conquered  Ital¬ 
ian  or  Gaul  against  the  Gothic  and  Lombard  con¬ 
queror,  the  mediator  between  the  German  and  his 
subjects,  the  one  bulwark  against  barbaric  violence 
and  oppression.  To  the  barbarian,  on  the  other 
hand,  he  was  the  representative  of  all  that  was  ven- 

1  The  ninth  canon  runs :  “  In  commune  tractatum  est,  ut  plures 
Episcopi  crescente  numero  fidelium  augerentur,  sed  de  hac  re  ad 
praesens  siluimus"  (Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  120). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Division 
of  the 
Mercian 
diocese. 


'j  'y  o 

erable  in  the  past — the  living  record  of  law,  of  letters, 
and  of  art.  But  in  Britain  priesthood  and  people 
were  exterminated  together.  When  Theodore  came 
to  organize  the  Church  of  England,  the  very  mem¬ 
ory  of  the  older  Christian  Church  which  existed  in 
Roman  Britain  had  passed  away.  The  first  mission¬ 
aries  to  the  Englishmen,  strangers  in  a  heathen  land, 
attached  themselves  necessarily  to  the  courts  of  the 
kings,  who  were  their  earliest  converts,  and  whose 
conversion  was  generally  followed  by  that  of  their 
people.  The  English  bishops  were  thus  at  first  roy¬ 
al  chaplains,  and  their  diocese  was  naturally  nothing 
but  the  kingdom.  The  kingdom  of  Kent  became 
the  diocese  of  Canterbury,  and  the  kingdom  of 
Northumbria  became  the  diocese  of  York.  So  ab¬ 
solutely  was  this  the  case  that  the  diocese  grew  or 
shrank  with  the  growth  or  shrinking  of  the  realm 
which  it  spiritually  represented,  and  a  bishop  of 
Wessex  or  of  Mercia  found  the  limits  of  his  see 
widened  or  cut  short  by  the  triumphs  of  Wulfhere 
or  of  Ine.  In  this  way,  too,  realms  which  are  all 
but  forgotten  are  commemorated  in  the  limits  of  ex¬ 
isting  sees.  That  of  Rochester  represented  till  of 
late  an  obscure  kingdom  of  West  Kent,  and  the 
frontier  of  the  original  kingdom  of  Mercia  might  be 
recovered  by  following  the  map  of  the  ancient  bish¬ 
opric  of  Lichfield. 

To  make  episcopal  rule  and  supervision  a  real  and 
living  thing  over  such  wide  spaces,  it  was  needful 
that  these  realm-dioceses  should  be  broken  up  into 
smaller  sees ;  but  it  was  characteristic  of  the  care 
with  which  Theodore  sought  an  historical  founda¬ 
tion  for  his  work  that  even  in  their  division  he  only 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


333 


fell  back  on  the  tribal  demarcations  which  lay  with-  chap.vii. 
in  the  limits  of  each  kingdom.  Thus,  when,  in  673,  The 
he  broke  up  the  see  of  East  Anglia,  it  was  by  divid-  ancTthe 
ing  it  into  dioceses  of  the  North-folk  and  the  South-  Kingdoms, 
folk,  whose  prelates  were  established  at  Dunwich  659-690. 
and  Elmham.1  He  dealt  in  the  same  way  with  the 
huger  Mercian  diocese  by  setting  a  bishop  over  the 
Middle  English  with  a  see  at  Leicester;  by  estab¬ 
lishing  at  Worcester  a  bishopric  for  the  Hwiccas  of 
the  lower  Severn  valley,  and  another  for  the  far- 
off  Hecanas  at  Hereford;  while  the  peoples  whom 
Wulf here’s  sword  had  torn  from  the  kingdom  of  the 
West  Saxons,  and  part  of  whom,  at  least,  seem  to 
have  been  known  as  the  South  Engle,  may  have 
been  committed  to  the  charge  of  a  bishop  at  Dor¬ 
chester  on  the  Thames.2  The  see  of  Lichfield  thus 
returned  to  its  original  form  of  a  see  of  the  Mercians 
proper,  though  its  bounds  on  the  westward  now  em¬ 
braced  much  of  the  upper  Severn  valley,  with  Chesh¬ 
ire  and  the  lands  northward  to  the  Mersey. 

The  division  of  Mercia  seems  to  have  been  begun  The  mo¬ 
rn  the  face  of  an  opposition  from  Bishop  Winfrid,  movement. 
who  held  this  vast  diocese,  which  was  only  put  an 
end  to  by  Theodore’s  removal  of  him  from  his  see  in 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  5  ;  Flor.  Wore.  a.  673. 

3  The  details  of  this  division  are  obscure  (see  Haddan  and  Stubbs, 
Councils,  vol.  iii.  pp.  1 27-130).  For  Worcester  we  have  Baeda’s  au¬ 
thority  (Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23),  as  well  as  for  Dorchester  (ibid.),  though 
this  is  disputed  by  Professor  Stubbs  (Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  130,  note  e). 
The  sees  of  Mercia  and  the  Middle  Angles  were  still  both  in  Sexulf’s 
hands  as  late  as  678,  so  that  the  separation  of  the  latter  must  be 
later  than  that  year  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  12).  On  Putta’s  flight 
from  Rochester,  in  676,  Sexulf  gave  him  possession  of  a  church  at 
Hereford,  and  there  he  died  (ibid.) ;  but  at  what  exact  year  the  act¬ 
ual  bishopric  was  established  we  are  not  told. 


334 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  vii.  675  ; 1  and  years  more  had  to  be  spent  in  completing 
The  the  whole  arrangement ;  but  throughout  Theodore 
and  the  could  count  on  the  strenuous  support  of  the  king. 
Kingdoms,  jf.  was  possibly,  indeed,  the  accession  of  zEthelred, 
659-690.  who  succeeded  his  brother  Wulfhere  in  675,  that  en¬ 
abled  Theodore  to  begin  his  work  in  Mercia  in  that 
year.'  zEthelred  was  a  king  of  a  temper  far  other 
than  that  of  his  predecessor.  Though  the  first  days 
of  his  reign  were  disturbed  by  a  strife  with  Kent, 
which  was  sinking  more  and  more  into  dependence 
on  the  Mercian  kings,  and  which  seems  to  have  en¬ 
deavored  to  resume  its  independence  on  Wulfhere’s 
death,  an  effort  that  ended  in  fresh  submission  after 
the  destruction  of  Rochester,3  his  temper  was  peace¬ 
ful  and  religious,  and  his  activity  mainly  showed  it¬ 
self  in  a  planting  and  endowment  of  monastic  colo¬ 
nies,  which  gradually  transformed  the  face  of  the 
realm.  In  the  monastic  movement  of  this  time  two 
strangely  contrasted  impulses  worked  together  to 
change  the  very  aspect  of  the  new  England  and  the 
new  English  society.  The  one  was  the  passion  for 
solitude,  the  first  outcome  of  the  religious  impulse 
given  by  the  conversion ;  a  passion  for  communing 
apart  with  themselves  and  with  God,  which  drove 
men  into  waste  and  woodland  and  desolate  fen. 
The  other  was  the  equally  new  passion  for  social 
life  on  the  part  of  the  nation  at  large,  the  outcome 
of  its  settlement  and  well-doing  on  the  conquered 
soil,  and  yet  more  of  the  influence  of  the  new  re¬ 
ligion,  coming  as  it  did  from  the  social  civilization 
of  the  older  world,  and  insensibly  drawing  men  to- 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  6.  s  E.  Chron.  a.  675. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  12. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


335 


gether  by  the  very  form  of  its  worship  and  its  belief,  chap.vii. 
The  first  impulse  showed  itself  most  vividly  in  the  The 
Irish  missionaries :  in  Aidan’s  choice  of  a  lonely  andthe 
island  for  his  settlement  at  Lindisfarne;  in  Cuth-Kingdom8, 
bert’s  choice  of  a  yet  lonelier  sand-bank  for  his  later  659-690. 
hermitage ;  in  Ceadda’s  retirement  in  the  quiet  soli¬ 
tude  of  Lichfield;  or  in  Maidulf’s  withdrawal  to  the 
woods  of  Malmesbury.  But  the  close  of  the  seventh 
century  had  no  sooner  brought  with  it  its  period  of 
peace  than  the  social  impulse  was  quick  to  undo  the 
work  which  these  solitaries  had  done.  Reverence 
for  their  holiness,  with  a  desire  to  profit  by  their 
teaching,  drew  devotee  and  scholar  alike  around 
them;  and  the  little  community  had  no  sooner  vin¬ 
dicated  the  new  dignity  which  Christianity  had 
given  to  labor  by  winning  field  from  the  forest,  or 
meadow  from  the  marsh,  than  it  became  the  centre 
of  a  yet  wider  attraction.  The  sanctity  of  such  set¬ 
tlements  served  in  these  early  days  of  the  new  re¬ 
ligion  to  insure  for  them  peace  and  safety  in  the 
midst  of  whatever  war  or  social  trouble  might  be 
disturbing  the  country  about  them  ;  and  the  longing 
for  a  life  of  quiet  industry,  which  we  see  telling  from 
this  moment  upon  the  older  English  longing  for 
war,1  drew  men  in  crowds  to  these  so-called  monas¬ 
teries.2 

No  settlements,  indeed,  could  be  more  unlike  the  its  results. 
monasteries  of  later  days.  A  vow  of  obedience  and 
a  vow  of  celibacy  sufficed  to  hold  the  monks  them¬ 
selves,  who  formed  the  nucleus  of  each,  together;  and 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  3.  Vit.  Abbat.  (Hussey’s  Baeda,  p.  322). 

3  Thus,  there  were  six  hundred  at  Wearmouth  soon  after  its  es¬ 
tablishment,  Baeda,  Vit.  Abbat.  (Hussey’s  Baeda,  p.  328). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


336 

chap. vh.  the  necessity  of  labor  for  their  maintenance  left  their 
The  intercourse  with  the  settlers  and  dependants  about 
and  the  them  as  free  as  that  of  other  men.  So  far,  indeed, 
Kingdoms.  were  these  homes  from  being  bound  by  the  strict 
659-690.  ties  of  the  Benedictine  rule  that  they  were  often 
gathered  on  the  loose  Irish  model  of  the  family  or 
the  clan  round  some  noble  and  wealthy  person  who 
sought  devotional  retirement.  The  looseness  of 
their  discipline,  combined  with  a  peculiar  usage 
which  in  some  cases  brought  monks  and  nuns  to¬ 
gether  under  the  rule  of  the  same  abbess,  exposed 
these  communities  at  a  later  time  to  grave  scandals; 
and  in  many  cases  the  establishment  of  such  a  mon¬ 
astery  was  only  a  pretext  under  which  a  lord  and  his 
dependants  exempted  themselves  from  their  national 
obligations  of  military  service.1  But  even  in  such  a 
case,  the  newT  aversion  from  warfare,  the  new  long¬ 
ing  for  peaceful  industry,  was  shown  in  the  so-called 
monastery.  Whatever  were  the  causes,  however,  of 
this  movement,  it  brought  with  it  a  transfer  and  re¬ 
adjustment  of  population  which  changed  the  whole 
face  of  the  country.  Here  and  there  it  revived  the 
civilization  of  the  past  by  bringing  fresh  life  to  the 
ruins  of  a  Roman  town.  The  solitude  of  its  ruins 
drew  to  them  a  hermit,  and  the  sanctity  of  the  her¬ 
mit  drew  after  him  a  crowd  of  disciples  and  settlers 
that  again  brought  busy  life  to  its  desolation.  But 
it  made  a  more  startling  revolution  by  reclaiming 
the  wilder  districts  which  civilization  and  social  life 
had  as  yet  never  visited  at  all.  It  broke  the  dreary 
line  of  the  northern  coast  with  settlements  which 

1  Baeda,  Letter  to  Ecgberht  (Hussey’s  Basda,  p.  338),  and  Hist. 
Eccl.  v.  23. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


337 


proved  forerunners  of  some  of  our  busiest  ports.  It  chap. vii. 
broke  the  silence  of  waste  and  moor  by  houses  like  The 
those  of  Ripon  and  Lastingham.  It  set  agricultural  and  the 
colonies  in  the  depths  of  vast  woodlands,  as  at  Eves- Kinsdoms' 
ham  or  Malmesbury,  while  by  a  chain  of  religious  659-690. 
houses  it  made  its  way  step  by  step  into  the  heart  of 
the  Fens. 


MID  -  BRITAIN.  700  -  800. 


We  can  best  realize  the  change  which  this  move-  Forest  of 
ment  made  in  Mercia  by  following  it  here  and  there 
across  the  face  of  the  country.  In  the  angle  between 
the  Cotswolds  and  the  hills  which  form  the  eastern 
boundary  of  the  Severn  valley  lay  the  largest  of  all 
the  forests  of  Britain.  The  barren  tract  of  low  clays, 
indeed,  which  lay  along  the  base  of  the  Cotswolds, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


338 

chap,  vii.  was,  for  the  most  part,  free  from  wood ;  but  across 
The  the  Avon,  from  the  site  of  our  Ruo;by  to  that  of  our 
and  the  Evesham,  ran  a  line  of  dense  woodland  which  stretch- 
Kingdoms.  e(j  away  northward  without  a  break  to  the  bounds 
659-690.  0f  Cannock  Chase,1  and  extended  eastward  and  west¬ 
ward  from  the  valley  of  the  Severn  to  the  limits  of 
our  Leicestershire.2  This  was  Arden,  the  forest  into 
whose  depths  Shakspere  could  stray,  centuries  later, 
from  his  childhood’s  home  at  Stratford,  and  in  whose 
glades  his  fancy  placed  the  scene  of  one  of  his  love¬ 
liest  dramas.3  But  in  Shakspere ’s  day  its  mass  was 


1  A  line  of  hamlets  which  bear  the  name  of  “  Woodend,”  stretch¬ 
ing  across  Staffordshire,  just  south  of  Walsall  and  Wolverhampton, 
marks  roughly  the  northern  border  of  Arden.  Camden  marks  one 
by  Shenstone,  just  south  of  Lichfield,  another  close  to  Walsall,  and 
a  third  at  Sedgley,  south  of  Wolverhampton.  But  beyond  these 
the  ground  was  still  richly  studded  in  Camden’s  day  with  outliers 
of  the  “  Wooland,”  Walsall  Wood,  Essington  Wood,  Kingswood, 
and  the  like,  which  show  its  extension  at  an  earlier  time.  See  map 
of  Staffordshire  in  Camden’s  Britannia  (ed.  1753),  vol.  i.  p.  633. 

2  As  late  as  Elizabeth’s  time  (and  Shakspere’s  time)  our  War¬ 
wickshire  was  parted  into  the  “  Feldon  ”  and  the  “Wooland,”  or 
Wood-land — the  first  a  tract  of  open  pastures  between  the  Avon 
and  the  Cotswolds ;  the  second,  to  the  north  of  the  Avon,  though 
not  without  “pastures  and  cornfields,”  yet  in  the  main  “clothed 
with  woods  ”  (Camden,  Britannia,  ed.  1753,  vol.  i.  pp.  598,  606).  The 
clearing  of  the  “  Wooland  ”  was,  in  fact,  only  due  to  the  subsequent 
growth  of  its  iron-works,  which  “  destroyed  such  prodigious  quan¬ 
tities  of  wood  that  they  laid  the  country  more  open,  and  by  degrees 
made  room  for  the  plough,”  so  that  “whereas  within  the  memory 
of  man  they  were  supplied  with  corn  from  the  Feldon,”  writes  Gib¬ 
son,  in  1753,  they  now  grew  more  corn  than  they  needed.  By  a 
curious  correlative  change,  as  the  soil  thus  cleared  proved  far  more 
fertile  than  the  clay  lands  of  the  Feldon,  the  latter,  whose  “  fertile 
fields  of  corn  and  verdant  pastures”  had  delighted  Camden’s  eye  in 
1606,  had  by  Gibson’s  day  become  almost  wholly  pasture  land. 

3  As  You  Like  It,  act  i.  sc.  i.  “  Oliver.  Where  will  the  old  duke 
live  ?  Charles.  They  say  he  is  already  in  the  forest  of  Arden,  and 
a  many  merry  men  with  him  ;  and  there  they  live  like  the  old  Robin 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


ion 

o  jy 

broken  everywhere  by  the  clearings  of  the  Warwick-  chap.vii. 
shire  men ;  towns  were  planted  in  the  very  heart  of  The 
its  woodlands,  and  the  miner  had  thinned  its  clumps  and  the 
with  his  forges.  No  such  settlement  or  traces  of  Kingdoms- 
man  broke  its  solitude  when  the  West  Saxons  gazed  659-690. 
on  the  skirts  of  this  huge  forest  after  their  victory  at 
Deorham.  Even  the  great  roads  of  the  island  re¬ 
frained  from  piercing  it,  though  three  of  the  main 
lines  of  communication  through  Britain  ran  along  its 
edges.  The  Fosse  Road  traversed  the  open  clays 
between  the  Avon  and  the  Cots  wolds.  The  Wat- 
ling  Street  struck  along  its  northwestern  border 
from  our  Rugby  to  Tamworth.  Even  the  Ryknield 
Way,  which  was  probably  a  mere  track-way  of  the 
earliest  times,  crept  along  the  western  border  of  the 
forest  beneath  the  slopes  of  the  Lickey  Hills,  and 
only  struck  across  it  in  its  northern  and  narrower 
portion  past  the  site  of  the  later  Birmingham  to  the 
plain  of  the  Tame. 

In  the  broken  and  volcanic  country  along  the  Evesham. 
northern  border  of  Arden,  there  was  nothing  as  yet 
to  show  the  existence  of  those  mineral  treasures 
which  nowadays  make  this  district  lurid  night  and 
day  with  the  glare  of  iron-foundries,  and  hideous 
with  their  cinder-heaps.  All  was  still  wild  forest¬ 
land  where  the  little  settlement  of  Wolverhampton 
told  of  the  wolves  who  carried  off  the  farmers’ 
sheep  and  kine  into  the  thickets ;  while  further  in 
its  depths,  unconscious  of  its  after-greatness,  lay  the 
little  “  ham  ”  of  the  Beormingas,  our  Birmingham. 


Hood  of  England.  They  say  many  young  gentlemen  flock  to  him 
every  day,  and  fleet  the  time  carelessly,  as  they  did  in  the  golden 
world.” 


340 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chaivvii.  It  was  only  on  its  southeastern  border,  in  fact,  that 
The  life  and  industry  as  yet  touched  this  woodland.  Here, 
and  the  between  the  forest  edge  and  the  slopes  of  the  Cots- 
Kingdoms.  wolds,  the  Avon  made  its  way  to  the  Severn  valley, 
659  690.  and  along  the  vale  of  the  Avon  were  scattered  a 
few  early  settlements.  Coventry,  indeed,  was  not  to 
rise  for  centuries  on  its  waters ;  but  Kenilworth  and 
Leamington  were,  no  doubt,  even,  now  quiet  town¬ 
ships  in  this  district;  the  tribe  of  the  Wearingas 
must  have  already  set  up  that  “  wick  ”  of  their  own 
which  was  to  give  its  name  of  Wearingawick,  or 
Warwick,  to  the  whole  tract  when  it  became  shire 
land ;  Stratford  marked  the  place  where  the  Roman 
road  passed  the  river  by  its  paved  ford  on  its  way 
to  the  west ;  and  a  little  onward  a  “  vill  ”  of  the 
Hwiccan  or  Mercian  kings  was  rising  beside  the 
ruined  walls  and  towers  which  were  all  that  re¬ 
mained  of  the  Roman  Alcester.  Heathendom  must 
still  have  lingered  in  the  mighty  woodland  when 
Bishop  Ecgwine  of  Worcester  carried  the  Gospel 
into  its  depths  ;  and  we  may  perhaps  see  Woden- 
worshipping  miners  at  Alcester  in  the  daemons  of 
his  legend,  who  drown  the  preacher’s  voice  with  the 
din  of  their  hammers.  But  in  spite  of  their  ham¬ 
mers  Ecgwine’s  preaching  left  a  lasting  trace  be¬ 
hind  it.  The  bishop  heard  how  a  swineherd,  com¬ 
ing  out  of  the  dark  forest  into  a  sunny  glade,  saw 
forms  which  were  possibly  those  of  the  Three  Fair 
Women  of  the  old  German  mythology,  seated  round 
a  mystic  bush,  and  singing  their  unearthly  song.  In 
Ecgwine’s  fancy,  these  women  transformed  them¬ 
selves  into  a  vision  of  the  Mother  of  Christ ;  and  the 
silent  glade  soon  became  the  site  of  an  abbey  dedi- 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


341 


cated  to  her,  and  of  a  town  which  sprang  up  un¬ 
der  its  shelter — the  Evesham  which  was  to  be  hal¬ 
lowed  in  after -time  by  the  fall  of  Earl  Simon  of 
Leicester.1 2 

Wilder  even  than  the  western  woodland  was  the 
desolate  fen -country  on  the  eastern  border  of  the 
kingdom  which  stretched  from  the  “  Holland,”  the 
sunk,  hollow  land  of  Lincolnshire,  to  the  channel  of 
the  Ouse,  a  wilderness  of  shallow  waters  and  reedy 
islets,  wrapped  in  its  own  dark  mist-veil,  and  tenanted 
only  by  flocks  of  screaming  wild-fowl.  Here,  through 
the  liberality  of  King  Wulfhere,  rose,  on  the  western 
border  of  the  great  morass,  the  Abbey  of  Medesham- 
stead,  a  community  which  grew  in  after-time  into 
our  Peterborough.  On  its  northern  edge  an  obscure 
hermit,  Botulf,  founded  a  little  house  which,  as  ages 
went  by,  became  our  Botulf's  town,  or  Boston."  Fur¬ 
ther  in  the  fen  itself  the  queen  of  Ecgfrid,  Aithel- 
thryth  or  /Etheldreda,  found  a  refuge  from  her 
husband  in  the  low  rise  amidst  its  waters  which  is 
crowned  nowadays  with  the  noble  minster  of  Ely.3 
It  was  in  the  very  heart  of  the  fen  that  Guthlac,  a 
youth  of  the  royal  race  of  Mercia,  sought  a  refuge 


1  The  abbey  was  founded  in  709  (Haddan  and  Stubbs,  Councils, 
iii.  278  et  seq .).  A  life  of  Ecgwine  may  be  found  in  Macray’s  Chron¬ 
icle  of  Evesham;  but  the  rendering  of  the  figures  in  his  vision  as 
the  “Three  Women  ”  is  a  doubtful  suggestion  of  Mr.  Wright.  For 
the  chronological  difficulties  of  the  story,  see  Stubbs,  Diet.  Christ. 
Biog.,  art.  “  Ecgwine,”  vol.  ii.  p.  62. 

2  Botulf  was  visited  about  670  by  Ceolfrid,  afterwards  Abbot  of 
Wearmouth  (Anon.  Hist.  Abbatum).  Basda,  Opera  Minora  (ed.  Ste¬ 
venson),  p.  319. 

3  For  Ely  and  its  name,  see  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  19,  where  he 
gives  the  story  of  Hstheldreda. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms, 

659  630. 

The  fen. 


342 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  vii.  from  the  world  in  the  solitude  of  Crowland.1  The 
chh6h  early  Guthlac2  marks  the  wild  barbarism  of 

and  the  the  times.  He  spent  it  after  the  fashion  of  young 
Kingdoms.  warriors,  jn  prjvate  feuds,  in  sacking  and  burning 
659-690.  town  and  homestead,  and  carrying  off  booty  from 
his  foes.  Suddenly  as  he  lay  sleepless  in  the  forest 
among  his  sleeping  war  band,  there  rose  before  him 
the  thought  of  his  crimes  and  of  the  doom  that 
waited  on  him.  Such  thoughts  were  stirred  in  many 
hearts,  no  doubt,  by  the  new  Christian  faith ;  but  in 
none  did  they  find  a  quicker  answer.  The  birds 
waking  with  the  dawn  only  roused  his  comrades  to 
hear  Guthlac’s  farewell.  At  the  Abbey  of  Repton, 
the  burying-place  as  yet  of  the  royal  line  of  Mercia, 
he  shore  off  the  long  hair  which  marked  the  noble ; 
and  then,  moved  by  the  life  of  hermit  saints  which 
he  read  there,  betook  himself  to  the  heart  of  the  fen. 
Its  birds  became  his  friends ;  they  perched  unhin¬ 
dered  on  shoulder  and  knee,  and  rested  in  the  thatch 
that  covered  the  little  cell  he  had  hollowed  out  in 
what  seems  to  have  been  a  plundered  burial-ground. 
“  He  who  in  cleanness  of  heart  is  one  with  God,  all 
things  are  one  with  him,”  commented  the  recluse ; 
“  he  who  denies  himself  the  converse  of  men  wins 
•  the  converse  of  birds  and  beasts  and  the  company 
of  angels.”  But  it  was  harder  than  Guthlac  fancied 
to  escape  the  converse  of  men.  His  solitude  was 
broken  by  crowds  of  devotees — by  abbot  and  monk, 
by  thegn  and  ceorl — as  they  flocked  over  the  fen  to 
the  solitary’s  cell ;  and  so  great  was  the  reverence 

1  For  Crowland,  even  in  the  sixteenth  century,  see  Camden’s 
Brittania  (ed.  1753),  vol.  i.  p.  551. 

s  The  name  of  Guthlac  was  that  of  his  house,  the  Guthlacings. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


343 


which  he  won  that,  two  years  after  his  death,  the  chap.vii. 
stately  abbey  of  Crowland  was  raised  over  his  tomb.  The 
Earth  was  brought  in  boats  to  form  a  site ;  the  and  the 
buildings  rested  on  oaken  piles  driven  into  the  Kingdoms' 
marsh,  a  stone  church  replaced  the  hermit’s  cell,  659-690. 
and  the  toil  of  the  new  brotherhood  changed  the 
pools  around  them  into  fertile  meadow-land.1 

If  we  turn  from  the  Fens  to  the  Thames  valley,  Jfhe 

J  Thames 

we  see  the  new  religion  gathering  new  centres  of  valley. 
social  life  along  the  line  of  the  great  river.  A  wild 
legend,  the  legend  of  St.  Frideswide,  first  gives  us  a 
glimpse  in  the  midst  of  the  eighth  century  of  the 
future  Oxford,  as  yet,  no  doubt,  but  a  few  fishermen’s 
huts  creeping  up  along  the  line  of  the  later  “  Fish 
Street”  from  the  ford  across  the  Thames  to  the 
little  monastery  that  had  risen  over  the  saint’s  re¬ 
mains;2  and  a  little  further  along  the  river,  in  some 
meadows  beside  its  southern  bank,  there  had  already 
risen  in  the  later  days  of  Ealdhelm  a  religious  house 
which  was  to  acquire  a  far  different  celebrity  from 
that  of  Frideswide,  the  abbey  under  whose  walls 
grew  up  the  town  of  Abingdon.3  As  Abingdon 


1  Guthlac’s  Life  is  printed  in  Acta  Sanct.  Boll,  at  April  n. 

2  Frideswide  is  not  mentioned  by  Breda,  but  an  Anglo-Saxon  cat¬ 
alogue  of  saints  states  her  to  have  been  buried  at  Oxford,  and 
Domesday  shows  her  canons  to  have  been  long  established  there. 
Her  story  first  appears  in  Malmesbury,  and  is  probably  a  genuine 
tradition.  The  expanded  life  by  Prior  Philip  may  be  found  in  the 
Bollandist  Acta  Sanctorum,  Oct.,  vol.  viii.  p.  560;  and  see  article  in 
Dictionary  of  Christian  Biography,  vol.  ii.  p.  563. 

3  The  early  history  of  Abingdon  is  obscure.  Hean,  a  nephew  of 
Cissa,  an  under-king  of  our  Berkshire  in  the  days  of  Centwine, 
seems  to  have  founded  the  original  monastery  on  folk -land  at 
Abba’s  dun,  “  where  Chilswell  farm  now  stands,”  says  Professor 
Bright,  Early  English  Church  History,  p.  262.  Ine,  however,  took 


344 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap.  vii.  rose  into  light,  the  brief  greatness  of  a  spot  lower 
The  down  the  river  was  passing  away.  The  present  vil- 
andufe  lage  °f  Dorchester  probably  occupies  the  site  of  a 
Kingdoms.  Roman  borough  ;  and  the  dyke  that  guarded  the 
659-690.  town,  as  well  as  a  huge  hill-fort  of  the  Britons  in  its 
neighborhood,  shows  that  the  spot  had  been  of  im¬ 
portance  in  very  early  times.  Here  Birinus  fixed 
the  bishop’s  stool  of  the  West  Saxons ;  and  here,  in 
the  presence  of  Oswald,  the  West-Saxon  king  sub¬ 
mitted  to  baptism.  But  the  removal  of  the  West- 
Saxon  bishopric  to  Winchester  gave  a  fatal  blow  to 
the  place  ;  and  even  a  later  transfer  to  it  of  the  Mer¬ 
cian  bishopric  failed  to  raise  it  into  importance.  Yet 
further  along  the  Thames  valley  the  great  founda¬ 
tion  of  Henry  the  First  had  not  begun  the  transfor¬ 
mation  of  the  settlement  of  the  Readings  into  our 
thriving  Reading;  nor  was  Windsor  to  be  crowned 
for  centuries  yet  by  the  group  of  royal  and  ecclesi¬ 
astical  buildings  which  preserves  the  glories  of  the 
Plantagenets.  But  the  bishops  of  the  East  Saxons 
were  already  establishing  their  home  at  Fulham.  In 
the  little  house  amid  the  marshes  of  the  Tyburn 
which  claimed  King  Saeberct  as  its  founder  lay  a 
germ  of  the  coming  Westminster;  and  if  no  great 
abbey  within  its  walls,  besides  its  own  church  of 
St.  Paul,  marked  the  devotion  of  London,  that  of 
its  bishop  Erconwald  was  shown  by  his  two  founda¬ 
tions — one  for  himself  at  Chertsey,  the  first  trace  of 
life  we  have  as  yet  encountered  in  the  new  Surrey ; 
the  other  for  his  sister  Hfthelburh  at  Barking.  The 
legends  of  Barking,  as  Bzeda  has  preserved  them, 


back  the  land ;  and  when  the  house  was  refounded  twenty  years 
later,  it  was  set  up  on  its  present  site,  then  called  Sheovesham. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


345 


are  full  of  the  poetry  of  monastic  life — of  those  vi¬ 
sions  of  angelic  glory,  those  sounds  of  angelic  music, 
that  gave  beauty  to  its  very  trivialities.  Light,  above 
all,  was  the  plaything  of  this  religious  fancy.  It  was 
the  resting  of  an  unearthly  brightness  on  the  spot 
that  guided  the  nuns  of  Barking  in  the  choice  of 
their  burial-ground ;  the  light,  they  said,  that  was  to 
receive  the  souls  of  its  hand-maidens  had  shown  the 
place  where  their  bodies  should  rest  till  the  rising 
again.  “  Let  your  candle  burn  as  it  may,”  murmured 
a  sister  of  the  same  house  to  those  who  watched  her 
dying  through  the  night,  “  it  is  no  light  of  mine  ;  my 
light  will  come  to  me  at  the  dawn  of  day !”  The 
body  of  their  dead  abbess,  as  the  nuns  in  vision  saw 
it  floating  heavenward,  glowed  with  a  celestial  splen¬ 
dor  beyond  the  sun.1 

In  a  survey  of  the  rest  of  the  Mercian  kingdom  we 
meet  with  little  more  than  names ;  but  even  names 
have  a  living  interest  when  they  reveal  to  us  for  the 
first  time  the  existence  of  communities  which  have 
lived  on  for  a  thousand  years  since,  and  form  actual 
elements  in  the  England  of  to-day.  As  we  pass 
from  the  valley  of  the  Thames  to  the  valley  of  the 
Severn,  we  find  that  a  new  English  borough,  the 
borough  of  Cirencester,  has  already  sprung  to  life 
on  the  wreck  of  the  Roman  Corinium.3  The  foun¬ 
dation  of  a  monastery  by  an  under- king  of  the 
Hwiccas  within  its  walls  reveals  to  us  the  springing- 
up  of  a  like  new  life  in  another  of  the  cities  which 
had  been  wrecked  by  Ceawlin’s  inroad,  the  city  of 
Bath.3  Gloucester,  though  we  do  not  hear  of  it  as 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  7,  8.  2  E.  Chron.  a.  628. 

5  A  monastery  at  Bath  was  founded  by  this  under-king  Osric  in  676. 


CHAP.  VII, 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Mid- Brit¬ 
ain. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


346 

chap. vii.  yet,  may  have  been  growing  into  being  on  the  site 
The  of  the  third  city  which  defied  the  West-Saxon  king, 
and  the  that  of  Glevum ;  but  the  new  masters  of  the  lower 
Kingdoms.  severn  valley  seem  to  have  found  their  centre  higher 
659-65°.  Up  the  river,  on  the  very  border  of  the  forest  of 
Wyre,  in  a  town  whose  existence  the  establishment 
of  one  of  Theodore’s  bishoprics  discloses  to  us,  the 
town  of  Wyre-ceaster,  or  Worcester.1 2  If  we  pass 
from  the  Severn  to  Mid-Britain  itself,  we  find  as  yet 
no  mention  of  Northampton  on  the  upland  that  now 
bears  its  name,  nor  any  trace  of  the  return  of  life  to 
the  ruins  of  Towcester;  but  Medeshamstead,  as  we 
have  seen,  was  already  rising  where  the  upland 
sloped  to  the  fen,  and  the  little  monastery  of  Oundle 
shows  that  life  was  pushing  still  higher  up  the  val¬ 
ley  of  the  Nen.  Along  the  Trent  itself  we  find  few 
traces  of  the  new  social  impulse,  though  Repton  had 
been  called  to  life  on  its  upper  waters  by  the  with¬ 
drawal  of  Abbess  yElfrida  to  a  religious  life ;  and 
further  along  the  river  a  like  house  had  gathered  at 
Burton.  But  the  Mercian  kings  were  already  estab¬ 
lished  at  Tam  worth  ;  the  Pecsaetan  had,  no  doubt, 
found  a  centre  in  the  North  -  weorthig,  which  has 
become  our  Derby,  and  the  Middle  Engle  in  our 
Leicester ;  while  on  the  great  rise  to  the  south  of  the 
Humber  we  see  not  only  communities  established 
at  Sidnacester  and  Bardney,  but  a  new  borough  of 
the  Lindiswaras,  with  a  stone  church  founded  by 
Paulinus  as  its  spiritual  centre,  growing  up  among 
the  ruins  of  the  Roman  Lindum.' 

Such  was  the  Mercia  whose  ecclesiastical  organiza- 


1  Worcester  was  from  the  first  the  seat  of  the  Hwiccian  bishopric. 

2  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  16:  “  Lindocolinse  civitatis.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


347 


tion  Theodore  was  still  engaged  in  completing  when,  chap.  vir. 
in  678,  he  was  invited  by  King  Ecgfrith  to  undertake  The 
a  like  organization  of  Northumbria.1 2  Isolated  as  it  and  the 
had  now  become  from  the  rest  of  Britain,  North um- Klllgdoms- 
bria  was  far  from  having  sunk  from  its  old  renown,  659-690. 
either  in  government  or  war.  It  still  remained,  in-  Ecgfrith 
deed,  first  among  the  English  states.  Ecgfrith  had  ^umbria. 
succeeded  his  father,  Oswiu,  in  670;  '  and  though  he 
made  no  effort  to  reverse  his  father’s  policy  as  re¬ 
gards  Southern  Britain,  or  to  attempt  to  build  up 
again  a  supremacy  over  its  states,  he  showed  himself 
resolute  to  enlarge  the  bounds  of  his  kingdom  by 
conquests  over  the  Welsh.  The  Welsh  states  across 
the  western  moors  had  owned,  at  least  from  Oswald’s 
time,  the  Northumbrian  supremacy;  but  little  actual 
advance  had  been  made  by  the  English  in  this  quar¬ 
ter  since  the  victory  of  Chester,  and  northward  of 
the  Ribble  the  land  between  the  moors  and  the  sea 
still  formed  a  part  of  the  British  kingdom  of  Cum¬ 
bria.  It  was  from  this  tract,  from-  what  we  now 
know  as  Northern  Lancashire  and  the  Lake  district, 
that  Ecgfrith’s  armies  chased  the  Britons  in  the  early 
years  of  his  reign.3  The  British  clergy  still  fled  be¬ 
fore  the  conqueror’s  sword,  and  from  the  sacred  spots 
which  they  deserted  large  grants  were  made  by  Ecg¬ 
frith  to  the  see  of  York — in  the  country  between  the 
Ribble  and  the  Mersey,  in  Amounderness,  and  in 


1  Eddi,  Life  of  Wilfrid,  cap.  24:  “Theodorum  cum  muneribus  .  .  . 
invitaverunt.” 

2  Bitda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  5. 

3  This  conquest,  like  the  after-conquest  of  the  Piets,  lies  between 
his  accession,  in  670,  and  his  strife  with  Wulfhere  of  Mercia  in  675. 
See  Eddi,  Life  of  Wilfrid,  cap.  20. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


348 

chap. vii.  Cartmell,  or  the  vale  of  the  Duddon,’  the  three  dis- 
The  tricts  which  together  make  up  our  present  Lanca- 
and  the  shire;1 2 3 *  but  there  was  no  break  in  the  general  policy 
Kingdoms.  Qf  the  iater  English  conquests,  and  the  rest  of  the 
659-690.  British  population  remained  as  tributaries  on  the 
soil.5 

Triumphs  By  the  conquest  of  this  western  district,  Northum- 

over  Piets  .  J  1  . 

and Mer-  bna  now  stretched  uninterruptedly  from  sea  to  sea 
from  the  southern  border  of  Elmet  as  far  north  as 
the  city  of  Carlisle.  Carlisle  is  of  interest  as  the 
first  instance  which  we  have  met  with  of  a  city  in 
which  there  seems  to  have  been  no  break  of  munic- 


1  Wilfrid  claimed  for  his  see  “ea  loca  sancta  in  diversis  regioni- 
bus,  quae  clerus  Brytannus,  aciem  gladii  hostilis  manu  gentis  nostrae 
fugiens,  deseruit.  Erat  quippe  Deo  placabile  donum,  quod  religiosi 
reges  tarn  multas  terras  Deo  ad  serviendum  pontifici  nostro  con- 
scripserunt ;  et  haec  sunt  nomina  regionum  juxta  Rippel,  et  in 
Gaedyne,  et  in  regione  Dunutinga,  et  in  Caetlaevum,  in  caeterisque 
locis  ”  (Eddi,  Life  of  Wilfrid,  cap.  17).  Mr.  Raine,  in  a  note  on  this 
passage  of  Eddi,  says,  “  Peter  of  Blois,  in  his  missing  Life  of  Wilfrid, 
describes  these  districts  thus :  ‘  Scilicet  Rible  et  Hasmundesham  et 
Marchesiae  ’  (Leland,  col.  ed.  1774,  vol.  iii.  p.  1 10).  By  these  he  seems 
to  mean  Amounderness  in  North  Lancashire,  and  the  ‘terra  inter 
Ripham  et  Mersham  ’  (Domesday-book),  the  country  between  the 
Ribble  and  the  Mersey.”  He  points  out,  too,  that  if  Gaedyne  be 
identified  with  Gilling  near  Richmond,  and  Dunutinga,  or,  as  Peter 
of  Blois  calls  it,  Duninga,  with  the  county  watered  by  the  river 
Duddon,  as  well  as  Caetlaevum  with  Cartmell,  we  should  have  in 
these  districts  the  whole  of  the  western  part  of  the  archdeaconry 
of  Richmond,  and  thus  account  for  their  ecclesiastical  connection 
through  it  with  the  see  of  York. 

2  Cartmell  is  that  district  of  Lancashire  which,  isolated  from  the 
rest  of  the  county,  lies  north  of  Ulverston  Bay;  while  Amounder¬ 
ness  may  at  this  time  have  included  the  whole  tract  between  the 
Lune  and  the  Ribble.  See  Camden’s  Britannia  (1753),  vol.  ii.  p.  975, 
where  Amounderness  is  made  to  include  the  Fylde. 

3  Sim.  Durh.,  Historia  de  S.  Cuthberto ;  Twysden,  Dec.  Script, 

p.  69.  King  Ecgfrith  gave  “  Cartmell  et  omnes  Brittannos  cum  eo  ” 

to  St.  Cuthbert. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


349 


ipal  life  as  it  passed  into  English  hands.  Only  acHAP.vn. 
few  years  after  its  conquest  by  Ecgfrith,  we  find  a  The 
monastery  founded  there ; 1  while  the  city  itself  and  fna  the 
its  district  became  part  of  the  possessions  of  the  see  King(iom3' 
of  Lindisfarne,2  and  it  is  as  he  stands  by  its  Roman  659  680. 
fountain  that  Cuthbert  hears  the  news  of  Nectans- 
mere.  But  the  conquest  of  this  district  was  quickly 
followed  by  fresh  gains  in  the  north,  where  Ecgfrith 
attacked  with  the  same  success  both  the  Scots  be¬ 
yond  Clydesdale  and  the  Piets  over  the  Firth  of 
Forth.3  The  war,  indeed,  in  this  quarter  was  forced 
on  him  by  the  Piets,  who  rose  against  the  yoke  of 
tribute  to  which  they  had  submitted  under  Oswiu, 
and  marched  with  an  army  which  seems  to  have 
been  gathered  from  their  whole  territory  in  the 
Highlands  on  the  English  border.  Ecgfrith  met 
the  attack  with  a  comparatively  small  force ;  but  his 
victory  was  so  complete  that,  as  the  Northumbrian 
chronicler  tells  us,  two  rivers  were  filled  with  the 
corpses  of  the  slain,  and  the  Piets  were  reduced  to 
so  complete  a  subjection  that  their  territory  on  the 
northern  bank  of  the  Forth  was  reckoned  from  this 
time  as  Northumbrian  ground.4  How  far  Ecgfrith 
would  have  pushed  his  conquests  in  this  quarter  had 
his  hands  been  left  free  we  cannot  tell,  but  the  war 
with  the  Piets  was  hardly  over  when  he  was  forced 


1  Baeda,  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  27.  It  seems  probable  that  after 

Ecgfrith’s  death  his  queen  entered  this  monastery  (ibid.  cap.  28). 

3  Sim.  Durh.,  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  i.  9.  “  Lugubaliam  quae  Luel  voca- 

tur  in  circuitu  quindecim  milliaria  habentem  in  augmentum  susce- 
pit  ”  (Cuthbertus). 

3  Eddi,  cap.  21  :  “Triumphos  ad  Aquilonem  super  Brittones  et 
Scottos.” 

4  Eddi,  cap.  19. 


350 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  vii.  to  meet  a  more  formidable  attack  on  his  southern 
The  frontier.  Wulfhere,  as  we  have  seen,  had  carried  the 
and  the  supremacy  of  Mercia  not  only  over  the  whole  of 
Kingdoms.  Mid-Britain,  but  even  as  far  as  the  British  Channel ; 
659-690.  and  it  was  as  the  practical  master  of  all  Britain 
south  of  the  Humber,  and  with  a  force  drawn  from 
every  one  of  its  peoples,  that  he  marched  on  North¬ 
umbria  with  a  demand  of  subjection  and  tribute.1 2 
Ecgfrith,  however,  was  as  successful  against  the 
Mercians  as  against  the  Piets;  and  though, as  before, 
his  army  was  inferior  in  number  to  that  of  his  op¬ 
ponents,  after  a  bloody  encounter  he  drove  Wulfhere 
from  the  field,  and  forced  the  Mercian  king,  in  turn, 
not  only  to  surrender  the  land  of  the  Lindiswaras, 
which  he  had  taken  from  Oswiu  in  that  king’s  later 
days,”  but  to  pay  tribute  to  Northumbria.3 
r.'s  monas -  The  death  of  Wulfhere,  which  immediately  fol¬ 
lowed  this  triumph,  in  675,  and  the  accession  of  the 
more  peaceful  /Ethelred,  removed  for  the  time  all 
pressure  from  the  south,  and  left  Northumbria  free 
to  carry  on  a  work  of  industrial  development,  which 
was  producing  results  even  more  striking  than  those 
which  we  have  already  watched  in  Mid  -  Britain. 
Here,  as  there,  the  movement  was  in  name  a  monas¬ 
tic  one ;  but  the  establishment  of  the  monastic  col¬ 
onies  which  carried  life  and  culture  over  the  land 
was  furthered  in  the  north  more  than  elsewhere  by 


1  Eddi,  cap.  20 :  “  Ulfharius,  rex  Merciorum  .  .  .  omnes  australes 
populos  adversum  regnum  nostrum  concitans,  non  tarn  ad  bellan- 
dum  quam  ad  redigendum  sub  tributo,  servili  animo,  non  regente 
Deo,  proponebat.” 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  3. 

3  “  Occisis  innumeris  regem  fugavit,  regnumque  ejus  sub  tributo 
distribuit  ”  (Eddi,  cap.  20 ;  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  1 2). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


351 


the  enormous  sweeps  of  waste  which  still  made  up 
the  bulk  of  Northumbria.  Nowhere  was  this  waste 
so  continuous  as  along  the  eastern  coast.  Save  at 
the  passage  of  the  Tyne,  where  the  vEllian  Bridge 
must  now  have  been  dropping  into  decay,  hardly  a 
single  settlement  had  been  made  along  this  coast 
under  the  Roman  rule;  and  though  the  Engle  con¬ 
querors  had  planted  their  hams  and  tuns  along  its 
river-valleys,  such  as  those  of  the  Tweed  or  the  Tyne, 
and  had  set  a  few  fishing-villages  along  the  shore, 
the  bulk  of  the  country  was  still  untilled  and  un¬ 
claimed  of  man,  and  thus  passed  into  the  folk-land 
which  lay  at  the  disposal  of  the  Northumbrian  kings. 
Though  Edinburgh  had  been  an  English  fortress 
since  the  days  of  Eadwine,  and  we  already  catch 
sight  of  Dunbar  looking  out  over  its  stormy  seas,1 
the  whole  space  between  them,  north  of  the  Lam- 
mermoor,  was  still  folk-land  in  Oswald’s  day,  when 
it  was  granted  to  the  monastery  at  Lindisfarne.2  It 
was  from  the  waste  country  south  of  the  Lammer- 
moor  that  lands  almost  as  wide  were  bestowed  by 
Oswiu  on  a  monastery  which  Ebba  was  establishing 
on  the  coast  at  Coldingham,  as  well  as  on  the  House 
of  Melrose.  The  whole  of  the  pastoral  country  on 
the  banks  of  the  Bowmont  between  the  forest  of 
Jedburgh  and  the  Cheviots  seems  to  have  been  first 
reclaimed  when  it  was  granted  by  Oswiu  to  Cuth- 
bert  during  his  abode  at  Melrose.3  South  of  the 
Tweed  as  far  as  Bamborough,  and  reaching  inland 


1  Eddi,  cap.  38,  where  King  Ecgfrith  sends  Wilfrid  a  prisoner  in 
urbem  suam  Dynbaer.” 

2  Hist,  de  S.  Cuthberto ;  Twysden,  Dec.  Script,  col.  68. 

3  Hodgson  Hinde  on  “  Lothian,”  Archseol.  Journal,  vol.  xiv.  p.  31 1. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


352 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659  690. 


Their  sec¬ 
ular  char¬ 
acter. 


as  far  as  the  valley  of  the  Till,  lay  as  desolate  a  re¬ 
gion,  which  formed  part  of  the  domain  that  Oswald 
carved  out  of  his  folk-land  for  the  neighboring  holy 
island  of  Lindisfarne.*  Lesser  tracts  were  carved 
out  of  the  district  which  we  now  call  Durham,  and 
which  remained  for  centuries  a  wild  and  almost 
uninhabited  moorland,  for  the  little  houses  along 
its  shore  at  Ebbchester  and  Hartlepool;  while  the 
grants  of  Ecgfrith  and  Oswiu  to  Wearmouth  and  to 
Whitby  show  that  the  coast  district  preserved  the 
same  character  away  to  the  south  ;  in  fact,  when  de¬ 
scribing  the  site  which  King  Oidilwald  gave  for  the 
Monastery  of  Lastingham  in  the  moorlands  which 
are  now  known  as  the  forest  of  Pickering,  Baeda  calls 
it  a  place  “  which  looked  more  like  a  lurking-place 
for  robbers  and  a  retreat  for  wild  beasts  than  a  habi¬ 
tation  for  man.”' 

Of  these  colonies  the  northernmost,  save  a  little 
house  at  Tyningham  beside  Dunbar,  was  the  mon¬ 
astery  which  Ebba  founded  at  Coldingham,  to  the 
south  of  the  great  promontory  which  still  preserves 
her  memory  in  its  name  of  St.  Abb's  Head.  Ebba 
was  of  the  royal  line,  a  daughter  of  AEthelfrith  and 
a  sister  of  Oswald  and  Oswiu;1 2 3  and  the  character 
which  her  double  house  of  monks  and  nuns  took 
even  during  her  lifetime  shows  how  much  stronger 
a  part  was  played  in  these  settlements  by  the  social 
than  by  the  religious  impulse.  “  I  have  looked  into 
every  one’s  chamber  and  beds,”  a  heavenly  visitant 
is  said  to  have  declared  to  an  Irish  ascetic,  who  re- 


1  Hist,  de  S.  Cuthberto ;  Twysden,  Dec.  Script,  col.  69. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  23. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  19 ;  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  10. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


353 


ported  it  to  the  abbess,  “and  found  none  but  you  chap. vii. 
busy  about  the  care  of  the  soul ;  since  all  of  these  The 
folk,  both  men  and  women,  either  indulge  themselves  and  the 
in  sloth  and  sleep,  or  wake  to  commit  sin.  For  even  Kingdoms- 
the  cells  that  were  built  for  praying  or  reading  are  659-690. 
now  converted  into  places  of  feasting,  drinking,  and 
talking;  while  the  virgins  dedicated  to  God,  whenso¬ 
ever  they  are  at  leisure,  apply  themselves  to  weav¬ 
ing  fine  garments.”1 *  A  fire  which  swept  away  the 
Abbey  of  Coldingham  was  held  to  have  been  a  judg¬ 
ment  of  Heaven  on  the  worldliness  of  its  inmates;* 
but  the  tendency  to  create  such  settlements  only 
grew  stronger  as  the  days  went  on.  Under  Ecg- 
frith’s  successors,  the  practice  became  almost  uni¬ 
versal,  among  the  higher  nobles  and  thegns  of  the 
court,  of  procuring  grants  of  folk-land  under  the  pre¬ 
text  of  establishing  a  religious  house,  of  drawing  to 
them  monks  from  other  monasteries,  as  well  as  in¬ 
ducing  some  of  their  own  servants  to  take  the  ton- 
sure  and  promise  monastic  obedience  to  their  rule, 
while  themselves  often  remaining  laymen,  and  profit¬ 
ing  by  their  name  of  abbots  to  escape  from  all  obli¬ 
gation  of  military  service  to  the  realm.3  However 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  25. 

3  For  the  gross  moral  abuses  which  sometimes  grew  out  of  this 
loose  system  of  monasticism,  see  letters  of  Boniface  to  .TEthelbald, 
Herefrith,  and  Ecgberht ;  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  pp. 
35U  357.  358. 

3  In  749,  ^Ethelbald  of  Mercia  freed  all  monasteries  and  churches 
throughout  his  realm  from  taxation  and  service,  save  for  the  build¬ 
ing  of  bridges  and  the  defence  of  strongholds  (see  the  charter  in 
Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  386) ;  and  the  same  exemp¬ 
tion  was  given  in  the  other  kingdoms.  Baeda  gives  a  detailed  pict¬ 
ure  of  the  abuses  which  resulted  in  his  letter  to  Ecgberht.  “  At  alii 
graviorc  adhuc  flagitio,  quum  sint  ipsi  laici  et  nullius  vitae  regularis 


354 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Their  in¬ 
fluence  on 
labor. 


hotly  statesmen  or  divines  might  protest,  from  their 
different  points  of  view,  against  a  practice  which  de¬ 
graded  religion  while  it  weakened  the  military  and 
political  organization  of  the  realm,* 1  it  is  impossible 
not  to  see  in  such  settlements  as  these  an  effort  of 
Englishmen  to  free  themselves  from  the  trammels 
of  their  older  existence  and  to  find  a  more  social 
and  industrial  life. 

Labor,  indeed,  first  rose  into  honor  through  this 
early  monasticism.  The  story  of  Eosterwini  is  typ¬ 
ical  of  the  change  which  this  movement  brought 

vel  usu  exerciti,  vel  amore  praediti,  data  regibus  pecunia,  eniunt  sibi 
sub  praetextu  monasteriorum  construendorum  territoria  in  quibus 
suae  liberius  vacent  libidini,  et  haec  insuper  in  jus  sibi  haereditarium 
edictis  regalibus  faciunt  ascribi,  ipsas  quoque  litteras  privilegiorum 
suorum  quasi  veraciter  Deo  dignas,  pontificum,  abbatum,  et  potesta- 
tum  seculi  obtinent  subscriptione  confirmari.  Sicque  usurpatis  sibi 
agellulis  sive  vicis,  liberi  exinde  a  divino  simul  et  humano  servitio, 
suis  tantum  inibi  desideriis  laici  monachis  imperantes  deserviunt : 
imo  non  monachos  ibi  congregant,  sed  quoscunque  ob  culpam  ino- 
bedientiae  veris  expulsos  monasteriis  alicubi  forte  oberrantes  inve- 
nerint,  aut  evocare  monasteriis  ipsi  valuerint ;  vel  certe  quos  ipsi  de 
suis  satellitibus  ad  suscipiendam  tonsuram  promissa  sibi  obedientia 
monachica  invitare  quiverint.  .  .  .  Sic  per  annos  circiter  triginta,  hoc 
est,  ex  quo  Aldfrid  rex  humanis  rebus  ablatus  est,  provincia  nostra 
vesano  illo  errore  dementata  est,  ut  nullus  pene  exjnde  praefectorum 
extiterit  qui  non  hujusmodi  sibi  monasterium  in  diebus  suae  prae- 
fecturae  comparaverit,  suamque  simul  conjugem  pari  reatu  nocivi 
mercatus  astrinxerit ;  ac  praevalente  pessima  consuetudine  ministri 
quoque  regis  ac  famuli  idem  facere  sategerint  ”  (Hussey’s  Baeda, 
pp,  339,  340.  See  also  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  23). 

1  We  see  the  kings  resisting  the  excessive  creation  of  such  houses, 
doubtless  on  this  ground,  from  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century. 
Boniface,  in  a  letter  written  between  744  and  747,  remonstrated  with 
Hithelbald  of  Mercia,  “  quod  multa  privilegia  ecclesiarum  et  monas¬ 
teriorum  fregisses;”  and  adds,  “privilegia  ecclesiarum  in  regno 
Anglorum  intemerata  et  inviolata  permanserunt  usque  ad  tempora 
Ceolredi  Regis  Mercionum  et  Osredi  Regis  Deorum  et  Berniciorum.” 
Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  pp.  354,  355.  Ceolred  was  king 
of  Mercia  709-715  ;  Osred  of  Northumbria,  705-716. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


355 


about  in  men’s  conceptions  of  the  dignity  of  toil,  chap.vil 
Eosterwini  was  a  thegn  of  King  Ecgfrith’s  who,  at  The 
the  age  of  twenty -four,  “laid  down  his  arms,”  and,  and  the 
entering  the  monastery  of  Wearmouth,  threw  him- Kingdom3, 
self  cheerfully  into  the  toil  that  he  found  going  on  659-690. 
about  him.  “  It  was  a  pleasure  to  him  to  be  em¬ 
ployed  along  with  the  rest  of  the  brethren  in  win¬ 
nowing  and  grinding  corn,  in  milking  the  ewes  and 
cows,  in  working  in  the  bake-house,  the  garden,  and 
the  kitchen,  and  in  every  other  occupation  in  the 
monastery.  .  .  .  When  he  went  out  anywhere  for  the 
furtherance  of  the  business  of  the  monastery,  wher¬ 
ever  he  found  the  brethren  at  work  it  was  his  wont 
to  join  them  forthwith  in  their  labor,  whether  by 
guiding  the  plough-handle,  or  working  iron  with  the 
forge  hammer,  or  wielding  the  winnowing-fan.”1  We 
see  the  same  new  drift  of  feeling  yet  more  pictur¬ 
esquely  in  the  figure  of  Owini,  a  head  thegn  of  the 
household  of  Ecgfrith’s  queen,  as  he  stands  at  the 
gate  of  the  Monastery  of  Lastingham,  “  clad  only  in 
a  plain  garment  and  carrying  an  axe  and  mattock  in 
his  hand,  thereby  intimating  that  he  did  not  go  to 
the  monastery  to  live  idle,  as  some  do,  but  to  labor.” 

Once  admitted  as  a  brother,  Owini  carried  out  his 
purpose ;  “  for  as  he  was  less  capable  of  meditating 
on  the  Holy  Scriptures,  so  he  the  more  earnestly 
applied  himself  to  the  labor  of  his  hands,  .  .  .  and 
while  the  brethren  were  engaged  within  in  reading 
he  was  busy  without  at  work.”2  The  mere  sight  of 
nobles  such  as  these  laying  down  the  noble’s  arms, 
and  voluntarily  sharing  with  ceorl  and  serf  about 

1  Vit.  Abbatum,  Hussey’s  Bifida,  p.  322. 

3  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  3. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdom?. 

659-690. 

Their  in¬ 
fluence  on 
poetry. 


356 

them  the  labor  of  their  hands,  must  have  raised  labor 
itself  into  a  new  esteem  among  their  fellow-men,  and 
aided  in  that  development  of  industry  which  was 
changing  the  whole  face  of  the  country. 

But  the  movement  did  more  than  exalt  labor.  To 
its  social  side  we  are  indebted  for  the  birth  of  our  lit¬ 
erature.  While  Ealdhelm  was  singing  his  songs  on 
the  bridge  at  Malmesbury,  a  singer  of  far  other  sort 
was  building  up  a  great  English  poem  on  the  North¬ 
umbrian  coast.1  The  most  notable  and  wealthy  of  the 
religious  houses  of  Northumbria  was  that  of  Streo- 
nashalh,  an  abbey  which  Oswiu  had  reared  for  Hild 
and  the  child  he  had  vowed  to  God  as  a  thank-offer¬ 
ing  for  his  victory  at  the  Winwaed.2  The  love  of 
solitude  and  retirement  which  the  northern  Church 
drew  from  its  Celtic  founders  told  in  the  choice  of 
the  spot.  Much  of  its  loneliness,  indeed,  has  now 
passed  away ;  for  sunset,  as  it  strikes  along  the 
gorge  of  the  Esk  in  a  glory  of  color,  lights  up  as 
with  fire  the  ranks  of  red-tiled  houses  in  which  the 
busy  seaport  of  Whitby  clings  to  the  slopes  on 
either  side  of  the  river -mouth.  But  on  the  cliff 
above  it  the  weather-beaten  ruins  of  an  exquisite 
abbey-church,  which  rose  at  a  later  time  on  the  site 
of  Hild’s  monastery,  still  stand  out  dark  and  lonely 
against  the  sky ;  and  as  we  look  from  them  over  land 
and  sea,  the  solitude  which  she  chose  for  her  home 
comes  back  to  us.  Whitby  lies  hidden  in  its  river- 
valley  ;  the  bleak  moors  around  are  thinly  threaded 
by  half-buried  lines  of  woodland,  for  the  very  trees 

1  We  do  not  know  the  exact  date  of  Caedmon’s  poem ;  but  as  it 
was  read  to  Hild,  who  died  in  680,  it  must  have  been  composed 

some  time  in  Ecgfrith’s  reign.  2  In  657  (Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  24). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  or7 

j57 

take  shelter  in  deep  gorges  which  carry  the  moor  chap.  vn. 
waters  to  the  sea.  The  fringe  of  culture  that  now  The 
creeps  along  the  moorland's  edge,  the  cottages  dotted  and  the 
over  the  distance,  the  fishing- hamlets  huddled  at Kingdoms- 
the  mouth  of  streamlets  whose  hollows  break  the  659  69°- 
crumbling  line  of  marly  cliffs,  the  herring-boats  scat¬ 
tered  over  the  colorless  sea,  the  smoke -trail  of  ves¬ 
sels  on  the  gray  horizon,  hardly  lessen  the  impres¬ 
sion  of  loneliness.  As  we  look  over  the  wide  stretch 
of  country  whose  billowy  swells  and  undulations  lift 
themselves  dark  at  eventide  from  the  mist-veil  that 
lies  white  around  them,  we  see  again  the  waste  in 
which  Hild  reared  her  home,  its  gray  reaches  of 
desolate  water,  skimmed  but  by  the  white  wings  of 
gull  or  albatross,  its  dark  tracks  of  desolate  moor 
silent  save  for  the  wolf’s  howl  or  the  eagle’s  scream. 

The  stern  grandeur  of  the  spot  blends  fitly  with  Cadmon. 
the  thought  of  the  poet  who  broke  its  stillness  with 
the  first  great  song  that  English  singer  had  wrought 
since  our  fathers  came  to  Britain.  For  the  memory 
that  endears  Whitby  to  us  is  not  that  of  Hild  or  of 
the  scholars  and  priests  who  gathered  round  her. 

Her  abbey,  indeed,  became  from  the  first  the  greatest 
foundation  of  the  north,  for  Hild  was  the  daughter 
of  Hereric  and  the  great-grandchild  of  Ailla;  and 
though  years  of  change  had  passed  by  and  her  line 
had  ceased  to  rule,  she  still  drew  a  reverence  as  one 
of  the  last  of  the  royal  stock  of  Deira.  Her  coun¬ 
sel  was  sought  even  by  nobles  and  kings;  and  the 
double  monastery  over  which  she  ruled  became  a 
seminary  of  bishops  and  priests.1  The  sainted  John 


Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659  690. 


Cadmon's 

poem. 


358 

of  Beverley  was  among  her  scholars.  But  the  name 
which  really  throws  glory  over  Whitby  is  the  name 
neither  of  king  nor  bishop,  but  of  a  cowherd  of  the 
house.1  Though  well  advanced  in  years,  Caedmon 
had  learned  nothing  of  the  art  of  verse,  the  allitera¬ 
tive  jingle  so  common  among  his  fellows;  “  wherefore 
being  sometimes  at  feasts,  when  all  agreed,  for  glee’s 
sake,  to  sing  in  turn,  he  no  sooner  saw  the  harp  come 
towards  him  than  he  rose  from  the  board  and  went 
homewards.  Once  when  he  had  done  thus,  and 
gone  from  the  feast  to  the  stable,  where  he  had  that 
night  charge  of  the  cattle,  there  appeared  to  him 
in  his  sleep  One  who  said,  greeting  him  by  name, 
‘  Sing,  Caedmon,  some  song  to  Me.’ — ‘  I  cannot  sing,’ 
he  answered  ;  ‘  for  this  cause  left  I  the  feast  and  came 
hither.’  He  who  talked  with  him  answered,  ‘  How¬ 
ever  that  be,  you  shall  sing  to  Me.’ — ‘  What  shall  I 
sing?’  rejoined  Caedmon.  ‘The  beginning  of  cre¬ 
ated  things,’  replied  He.  When  the  cowherd  stood 
before  Hild  at  daybreak  and  told  his  dream,  abbess 
and  brethren  alike  concluded  ‘  that  heavenly  grace 
had  been  given  him  by  the  Lord.'  They  translated 
for  Caedmon  a  passage  in  Holy  Writ,  bidding  him,  if 
he  could,  put  the  same  into  verse.  The  next  morn¬ 
ing  he  gave  it  them  composed  in  excellent  verse; 
whereon  the  abbess,  understanding  the  divine  grace 
in  the  man,  bade  him  quit  the  secular  habit  and  take 
on  him  the  monastic  life.” 

Piece  by  piece  the  sacred  story  was  thus  thrown 
into  Caedmon’s  poem.  “  He  sang  of  the  creation  of 
the  world,  of  the  origin  of  man,  and  of  all  the  history 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  24. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


359 


of  Israel;  of  their  departure  from  Egypt  and  enter- chap. vn. 
ing  into  the  Promised  Land ;  of  the  incarnation,  The 
passion,  resurrection,  and  ascension  of  Christ ;  of  the  and  the 
terror  of  future  judgment,  the  horror  of  hell-pangs,  Kingdom8, 
and  the  joys  of  heaven.”  To  men  of  that  day  this  659-690. 
sudden  burst  of  song  seemed  a  thing  necessarily  di¬ 
vine.  “  Others  after  him  strove  to  compose  religious 
poems,  but  none  could  vie  with  him ;  for  he  learned 
the  art  of  poetry  not  from  men  nor  of  men,  but  from 
God.”  It  is  hard  for  a  modern  reader  to  enter  into 
Bzeda’s  enthusiasm,  for  not  only  are  parts  of  the 
poems  which  have  passed  under  Caedmons  name 
due  to  other  writers,  though  of  the  same  poetic 
school,  but  they  have  reached  us  only  in  fragments 
of  a  later  West -Saxon  version,'  and  their  Biblical 
paraphrases  are  often  literal  and  tedious.  But  where 
the  herdsman  gives  the  rein  to  his  own  fancy,  he  at 
once  shows  himself  a  great  poet.  He  wrought  no 
change,  indeed,  in  the  outer  form  of  English  song. 

His  verse  is  like  that  of  other  singers,  accented  and 
alliterative,  without  conscious  art  or  development,  or 
the  delight  that  springs  from  reflection;  a  verse  swift 
and  direct,  but  leaving  behind  it  a  sense  of  strength 
rather  than  of  beauty,  obscured,  too,  by  harsh  meta¬ 
phors  and  involved  construction.  But  it  is  emi¬ 
nently  the  verse  of  warriors,  the  brief  passionate  ex- 


1  Save  nine  lines  of  the  original  opening  which  have  been  pre¬ 
served  in  an  early  manuscript  of  Baida’s  History.  Recent  criticism 
restricts  the  work  of  Caedmon  to  the  poem  of  “Genesis,”  assigning 
“  Exodus  ”  and  “  David  ”  to  a  nameless  successor,  and  the  closing 
fragment  known  as  “  Christ  and  Satan  ”  to  an  altogether  later  time. 
Even  in  the  “  Genesis,”  verses  245-851,  which  include  the  famous 
passage  about  Satan,  are  now  believed  to  be  an  interpolation  in 
Caedmon’s  work,  drawn,  perhaps,  from  a  lost  Old-German  poem. 


360 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chaivvii.  pression  of  brief  passionate  emotions.  Image  after 
The  image,  phrase  after  phrase,  starts  out  vivid,  harsh, 
andthe  and  emphatic.  The  very  metre  is  rough  with  a  sort 
Kingdoms.  0f  self- violence  and  repression;  the  verses  fall  like 
659-690.  sword -strokes  in  the  thick  of  battle.  His  love  of 
natural  description,  the  background  of  melancholy 
which  gives  its  pathos  to  English  verse,  Caedmon 
only  shared  with  earlier  singers.  But  the  faith  of 
Christ  had  brought  in,  as  we  have  seen,  new  realms 
of  fancy.  The  legends  of  the  heavenly  light,  Baeda’s 
story  of  “  The  Sparrow,”  show  the  side  of  English  tem¬ 
perament  to  which  Christianity  appealed — its  sense 
of  the  vague,  vast  mystery  of  the  world  and  of  man, 
its  dreamy  revolt  against  the  narrow  bounds  of  ex¬ 
perience  and  life.  It  was  this  new  poetic  world 
which  combined  with  the  old  in  the  epic  of  Caedmon. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  enthusiasm  for  the  Christian 
God,  faith  in  whom  had  been  bought  so  dearly  by 
years  of  desperate  struggle,  breaks  out  in  long  rolls 
of  sonorous  epithets  of  praise  and  adoration.  The 
temper  of  the  poet  brings  him  near  to  the  earlier 
fire  and  passion  of  the  Hebrew,  as  the  events  of  his 
time  brought  him  near  to  the  old  Bible  history  with 
its  fights  and  wanderings.1  “  The  wolves  sing  their 
dread  evensong ;  the  fowls  of  war,  greedy  of  battle, 
dewy -feathered,  screamed  around  the  host  of  Pha¬ 
raoh,”  as  wolf  howled  and  eagle  screamed  round  the 
host  of  Penda.  Everywhere  Caedmon  is  a  type  of 
the  new  grandeur,  depth,  and  fervor  of  tone  which 
the  German  race  was  to  give  to  the  religion  of  the 
.  East. 

1  The  “  Exodus,”  as  I  have  said,  is  now  assigned  to  another  sing-- 
er ;  but  he  is  of  Caedmon’s  school. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


361 

English  poetry,  however,  was  far  from  ending  with  chap.vii. 
Caedmon.  His  successors  rivalled  him  in  grandeur,  The 
and  sometimes  surpassed  him  in  art.  The  lyrics  andthe 
and  eclogues  of  Cynewulf,1 *  a  minstrel  at  the  North- Kingdoms- 
umbrian  Court  in  the  middle  of  the  century,  are  659-690. 
the  noblest  and  most  finished  monuments  of  Old-  Effect  of 
English  verse ;  and  the  bulk  of  the  poems  which  movement 
we  now  possess  in  West-Saxon  versions  are  held  by  onarL 
modern  critics  to  be  in  reality  fragments  of  the 
poetic  literature  which  at  this  time  flourished  so 
abundantly  in  Northumbria.  Meanwhile  the  same 
impulse  that  gave  Englishmen  their  earliest  poetry 
brought  back  to  Britain  its  art.  Benedict  Biscop 
had  not  witnessed  the  triumph  of  his  party  in  the 
Synod  of  Whitby,  for  he  had  already  departed  on  a 
fresh  pilgrimage  to  Rome ;  and  though  he  accom¬ 
panied  Theodore  on  his  journey  to  England,  it  was 
only  at  the  close  of  a  fresh  pilgrimage  to  the  shrine 
of  the  Apostles  that  he  again  appeared  in  North¬ 
umbria  in  the  year  674."  Ecgfrith  at  once  made 
him  a  grant  from  the  folk-land  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Wear;  but  Benedict  had  already  begun  the  erection 
of  his  monastery  when  he  passed  into  Gaul  to  find 
masons  “  who  could  build  him  a  church  of  stone  after 
the  Roman  style.”3  Nothing  shows  more  vividly  the 
utter  destruction  of  the  Roman  life  in  Britain  than 
the  fact  that  with  Roman  buildings  still  rising,  even 

1  Hazlitt’s  ed.  of  Warton’s  Hist,  of  Engl.  Poetry,  vol.  ii.  Introd.  pp. 

16,  17. 

s  The  life  of  Benedict  is  given  by  Breda  in  the  opening  of  his 
Lives  of  the  Abbots  of  Wearmouth,  Hussey’s  Breda,  p.  316  et  seq. 

3  “  Gallias  petens  crementarios  qui  lapideam  sibi  ecclesiam  juxta 
Romanorum  .  .  .  morem  facerent  .  .  .  attulit  ”  (Breda,  Vit.  Abbat. 

P-  3  >9)- 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


Bishop 

Wilfrid. 


362  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

if  half  ruined,  before  their  eyes,  the  very  tradition  of 
the  building  art  had  passed  away,  and  that  archi¬ 
tecture  had  to  be  brought  back  to  Britain  as  a  for¬ 
eign  thing.  With  architecture 1  returned  other  arts. 
Glass-making  was  as  unknown  in  the  island  as  build¬ 
ing,  and  it  was  again  from  Gaul  that  Benedict  im¬ 
ported  glass -makers  to  glaze  the  windows  of  his 
church  and  to  teach  Englishmen  their  art.2  It  was, 
in  the  same  way,  to  the  sacred  vessels  and  vestments 
which  he  was  forced  to  bring  from  abroad  that  the 
English  owed  their  knowledge  of  the  arts  of  gold- 
work  and  embroidery,  in  both  of  which  they  soon 
came  to  excel.  A  later  visit  to  Rome  brought  to 
their  knowledge  the  art  of  painting;  and  the  stiff 
Byzantine  figures  with  which  Benedict  adorned  the 
interior  of  his  church — the  ring  of  Apostles  around 
its  apse  with  the  Virgin  in  their  midst,  the  stories 
from  Gospel  history  which  lined  its  southern  wall, 
and  the  Apocalyptical  visions  which  covered  its 
northern  wall — whether  they  were  paintings  or  mo¬ 
saics,  are  memorable  as  the  first  instances  in  the  new 
England  of  an  art  which  was  to  give  us  a  Reynolds 
and  a  Turner. 

No  buildings  in  Northern  Britain  could  vie  with 
Benedict’s  church  at  Wearmouth  save  the  churches 
which  his  friend  Wilfrid  was  raising  at  the  same 
time  in  the  western  moorlands  at  Ripon,  and  at  Hex¬ 
ham,  in  the  valley  of  the  Tyne.  Work  of  artistic 

1  So  famous  did  the  Northumbrian  architects  become  that  they 
were  called  even  over  the  Forth  by  King  Naiton  of  the  Piets 
(Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  21). 

5  “  Vitri  factores  artifices  Brittaniis  eatenus  incognitos  .  .  .  et  An- 
glorum  ex  eo  gentem  hujusmodi  artificium  nosse  ac  discere,  fece- 
runt  ”  (Bajda,  Vit.  Abbat.  p.  319). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


363 


restoration  was  as  much  a  passion  with  the  one  asCHAP-VI1- 
the  other ;  and  if  Wilfrid  had  visited  Gaul  in  part  The 
for  the  purpose  of  consecration,  it  was  in  part  too  and  the 
to  gather  “  the  builders  and  teachers  of  nearly  every  Kingdoms- 
art  whom  he  brought  with  him  in  his  train  on  his  659  69°- 
return  to  Britain.”1  Through  the  nine  years  that 
followed  his  arrival  at  York,  the  greatness  of  Bishop 
Wilfrid  seemed  to  vie  with  that  of  Ecgfrith.  The 
new  monastic  foundations  regarded  themselves  as 
his  monasteries,  and  at  a  later  time  he  could  boast 
of  the  thousands  of  his  monks;  while  the  Northum¬ 
brian  thegns  sent  their  children  to  be  brought  up  in 
his  household,  whether  with  the  end  of  their  becom¬ 
ing  clerks  or  of  serving  the  king  as  secular  nobles. 

His  wealth  and  generosity  seemed  boundless.  At 
one  time  he  entertained  Ecgfrith  in  a  feast  that  lasted 
three  days  and  three  nights ;  his  gifts  were  lavished 
on  his  monasteries  and  clergy ;  and  his  train,  as  he 
rode  through  the  country,  was  like  an  army  in  its 
numbers  and  in  the  kingly  splendor  of  its  vesture 
and  weapons.2  Friendly  as  the  relations  of  the  king 
and  bishop  were  at  first,  we  can  hardly  wonder  that 
a  pomp  such  as  this  brought  dissension  between 
them,3  or  that  Ecgfrith  seized  on  the  projects  of  The¬ 
odore  as  enabling  him  to  curtail  a  diocese  which 
stretched  over  the  whole  extent  of  his  realm. 

In  678,  Theodore  appeared  in  Northumbria  at  the 


1  Eddi,  cap.  14:  “Cum  cantoribus  Aidde  et  Eonan,  et  caementa- 
riis,  omnisque  ptene  artis  institoribus,  regionem  suam  rediens.” 

2  Eddi,  cap.  24  :  “  Innumerum  exercitum  sodalium  regalibus  vesti- 
mentis  et  armis  ornatum.” 

3  The  story  of  Wilfrid’s  friends  was  that  the  quarrel  began  in 
Ecgfrith’s  domestic  troubles  with  his  queen  yEtheldreda  and  the 
part  which  Wilfrid  took  in  them. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


364 

chap.  king’s  summons,  and  we  must  presume  that  Wil- 

The  frid's  resistance  to  his  plans  was  notorious,  for,  with- 
and  the  out  waiting  for  his  presence,  the  primate  deposed 
t  Kmgdoms-  him  from  his  see,  and  proceeded  to  the  division  of 
659-690.  his  diocese.  The  same  plan  of  falling  back  on  the 
Theodore  older  tribal  divisions  was  followed  here  as  elsewhere. 
''umbria.  Eata  was  set  at  Hexham  as  bishop  of  the  Bernicians, 
and  Bosa  at  York  as  bishop  of  the  Deirans,  while 
Eadhed  was  set  as  bishop  over  the  Lindiswara.1 
After  a  formal  protest  against  the  primate’s  action, 
Wilfrid  left  Northumbria  to  carry  his  appeal  to 
Rome,  where  an  agent  of  Theodore’s  awaited  him 
on  his  arrival,  and  the  cause  was  formally  heard  and 
debated  at  the  Papal  Court.  In  his  appeal  Wilfrid 
virtually  consented  to  a  division  of  his  diocese  if 
Rome  saw  need  of  this,2  but  he  claimed  the  annul¬ 
ling  of  the  sentence  of  deposition  as  uncanonical, 
and  his  claim  was  allowed.  With  bulls  and  letters 
from  the  Papal  See,3  he  again  appeared  at  Ecgfrith’s 
court,  but  they  were  rejected  as  having  been  obtained 
by  bribery  ;4  and,  by  the  order  of  the  Witan,  Wilfrid 
was  thrown  into  prison,  and  only  released  at  the  end 
of  nine  months.  Even  then  Ecgfrith’s  hostility  pre¬ 
vented  his  finding  a  refuge  in  either  Mercia  or  Wes¬ 
sex,  and  he  at  last  only  succeeded  in  hiding  himself 
behind  the  screen  of  the  Andredsweald  among  the 
South  Saxons. 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  12. 

2  “  Et  si  rursus  in  eadem  parochia,  cui  prsefui,  prsesules  adhibere 

praviderit,  saltern  tales  jubeat  praevidere  promovendos,  cum  qui- 
bus  possim,  pacifica  atque  tranquilla  inter  nos  Concordia  obtinente, 
Deo  unanimiter  deservire  (Eddi,  cap.  30).  3  Eddi,  cap.  34. 

*  “  DifTamaverunt  .  .  .  ut  pretio  redempta  essent  scripta  ”  (Eddi, 
cap.  34). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


365 


The  South  Saxons  were  the  one  English  people  chap.vii. 
who  still  remained  pagan ;  for  though  their  king,  The 
/Edilwalch,  had  been  baptized  at  Wulfhere’s  bidding  and  the 
some  twenty  years  before,1  and  an  Irish  missionary,  Kingdom;- 
Dicul,  had  set  up  a  little  monastery  at  Bosham,  yet  659-690. 
no  impression  seems  to  have  been  made  on  the  peo -Conversion 
pie  at  large.  It  was  not  the  first  time  that  Wilfrid  °saxonL 
had  encountered  them,  for  on  his  return  from  his 
consecration  in  Gaul  the  ship  in  which  he  was  cross¬ 
ing  the  Channel  had  been  driven  upon  their  shores, 
and  the  wild  wreckers  had  rushed  to  plunder  it,  with 
threats  of  death  to  the  crew  if  they  resisted  them. 

A  priest  who,  standing  on  a  high  mound,  strove  by 
incantations  to  “  bind  the  hands  ”  of  the  sailors,  was 
struck  dead  by  a  stone  flung  from  the  ship ;  and  so 
wild  was  the  rage  of  the  people  at  his  fall  that  it  was 
only  after  a  fierce  conflict  that  the  rise  of  the  tide, 
floating  the  vessel  again,  enabled  Wilfrid  and  his 
men  to  escape  to  Sandwich."  Their  wild  barbarism 
was  shown  yet  more  in  the  famine  which  was  rav¬ 
aging  the  country  when  Wilfrid  now  reached  it. 

Rather  than  die  tamely  of  hunger,  forty  or  fifty  men 
would  mount  a  cliff,  and,  joining  hands,  fling  them¬ 
selves  together  into  the  sea.3  They  seem  not  even 
to  have  possessed  the  knowledge  of  fishing;  and  it 
was  partly  by  the  skill  with  which  he  used  this  means 
of  allaying  their  wants  that  Wilfrid  succeeded  in 
bringing  them  over  to  Christianity.  Those  who  re¬ 
fused  had  to  submit  to  their  king’s  command;4  and 


1  Baida,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  13.  2  Eddi,  cap.  13. 

3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  13. 

4  Eddi,  cap.  41  :  “Ouidam  voluntarie,  alii  vero  coacti  regis  impe- 
rio,  idolatriam  deserentes.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 

Completion 

°f 

Theodore's 

work. 


-366 

it  was  in  the  midst  of  this  new  flock  that  Wilfrid  re¬ 
mained  for  some  five  years,  in  unaccustomed  quiet, 
on  the  land  which  yEdilwalch  granted  to  him  at 
Selsey. 

Meanwhile  Theodore  completed  his  work  in  the 
north  by  the  creation  of  two  fresh  bishoprics — one 
of  them  at  Lindisfarne,  and  the  other  far  away  at 
Abercorn,  across  the  Firth  of  Forth,  in  the  province 
of  the  Piets.  The  three  years’  delay  before  this  final 
step  in  682  1  was  probably  due  to  a  war  that  sprang 
up  between  Mercia  and  Northumbria  in  the  year 
that  followed  the  opening  of  the  primate’s  work  in 
the  north.  The  country  of  the  Lindiswara  still  re¬ 
mained  a  subject  of  contention  between  the  two 
kingdoms.  It  was  assailed  in  679  even  by  the  peace¬ 
ful  Mithelred,  and  the  armies  of  the  two  kings  met 
in  a  bloody  contest  on  the  banks  of  the  Trent.2  The 
strife  was  brought  to  an  end  by  the  intervention  of 
Theodore ;  and  the  position  which  the  archbishop 
had  attained  was  shown  by  the  acceptance,  on  the 
part  of  both  states,  of  a  treaty  of  peace  which  he 
drew  up,  and  by  the  consent  of  Northumbria  to  an 
abandonment  of  its  supremacy  over  the  Lindiswara.3 
Such  a  consent,  however,  shows  that  Ecgfrith’s  pow¬ 
er  was  now  fatally  shaken.  The  old  troubles  revived 
on  his  northern  frontier,  where  the  Scots  of  Argyle 
would  seem  to  have  received  aid  in  some  rising  from 
the  men  of  their  blood  across  the  Irish  Channel,  for 
in  684  the  Northumbrian  fleet  swept  the  Irish  shores4 
in  a  raid  which  seemed  like  sacrilege  to  those  who 
loved  the  home  of  Aidan  and  Columba ;  and  where, 


1  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  12. 
3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  12. 


5  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  21. 
4  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  26. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  36 7 

in  685,  a  rising  of  the  Piets  forced  Ecgfrith’s  army  chap. vii. 
again  to  cross  the  Firth  of  Forth.  The 

A  sense  of  coming  ill  weighed  on  Northumbria,  and  the 
and  its  dread  was  quickened  by  a  memory  of  the Kingdoms' 
curses  which  had  been  pronounced  by  the  Irish  bish-  659  69°- 
ops  on  the  king  in  vengeance  for  the  ravages  of  his  Mctans- 
fleet.  Nowhere  was  this  sense  of  coming  ill  more 
vivid  than  in  the  mind  of  Cuthbert.  Cuthbert  had 
remained  at  Findisfarne  through  a  great  secession 
which  followed  on  the  Synod  of  Whitby,1  and  be¬ 
come  prior  of  the  dwindled  company  of  brethren,2 
now  torn  with  endless  disputes,  against  which  his 
patience  and  good-humor  struggled  in  vain.  Worn 
out  at  last,  he  fled  to  a  little  island  of  basaltic  rock, 
one  of  a  group  not  far  from  Ida’s  fortress  of  Barn- 
borough,  strewn,  for  the  most  part,  with  kelp  and 
sea-weed,  the  home  of  the  gull  and  the  seal.3  In  the 
midst  of  it  rose  his  hut  of  rough  stones  and  turf,  dug 
deep  into  the  rock,  and  roofed  with  logs  and  straw. 

It  was  the  growing  reverence  for  his  sanctity  that 
dragged  Cuthbert  back,  after  years  of  this  seclusion, 
to  fill  the  vacant  see  of  Lindisfarne.4  He  entered 
Carlisle,  which  the  king  had  bestowed  upon  his  bish¬ 
opric,  at  a  moment  when  all  were  waiting  for  news 
of  Ecgfrith’s  campaign ;  and  as  he  bent  over  a  Ro¬ 
man  fountain  which  still  stood  unharmed  among 
the  ruins  of  Carlisle,  the  anxious  bystanders  thought 
they  caught  words  of  ill  -  omen  falling  from  the 
old  man’s  lips.  “  Perhaps,”  Cuthbert  seemed  to 


1  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  26. 

2  Breda,  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  16. 

2  Breda,  Life  of  Cuthbert,  cap.  1 7  et  seq. 

*  Breda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  28. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


368 

charvii.  murmur,  “  at  this  very  hour  the  peril  of  the  fight  is 
The  over  and  done.”  “  Watch  and  pray,”  he  said,  when 
and  the  they  questioned  him  on  the  morrow;  “watch  and 
Kingdoms.  pr ay  ”  jn  a  few  days  more  a  solitary  fugitive,  es- 
659-690.  caped  from  the  slaughter,  told  that  the  Piets,  under 
Bruidi,  their  king,  had  turned  desperately  to  bay  as 
the  English  army  entered  Fife ;  and  that  Ecgfrith 
and  the  flower  of  his  nobles  lay,  a  ghastly  ring  of 
corpses,  on  the  far-off  moorland  of  Nectansmere.1 
The°da°jfs  Terrible  as  was  the  blow  to  Northumbria,  it  re¬ 
moved  the  last  difficulty  in  Theodore’s  path.  He 
was  now  drawing  near  the  close  of  his  life,  and  anx¬ 
ious,  ere  he  died,  to  secure  his  work  of  organization 
by  the  reconciliation  of  the  one  prelate  who  still  op¬ 
posed  it.  Wilfrid,  too,  was  backed  by  Rome;  and 
to  set  at  nought  the  judgment  of  Rome  must  have 
seemed  to  the  primate  a  practical  undoing  of  his 
earlier  efforts  to  bring  about  the  submission  of  Brit¬ 
ain  to  the  Papal  See.  The  personal  hostility  of 
Ecgfrith  had  hitherto  stood  in  the  way  of  any  meas¬ 
ures  of  conciliation;  but  on  his  fall  at  Nectansmere 
Theodore  at  once  summoned  Wilfrid  to  a  confer¬ 
ence  at  London,  and  a  compromise  was  arranged  be¬ 
tween  the  two  prelates.  By  the  intercession  of  the 
primate  with  the  new  Northumbrian  king,  Alchfrid,2 
Wilfrid  was  restored  to  the  see  of  York;  but  the 
work  of  Theodore  in  the  north  was  left  intact,  for 
the  see  to  which  Wilfrid  returned  was  simply  that 
of  the  Deiri,3  while  the  Bernician  sees  of  Lindisfarne 


1  Baeda.  Life  of  Cuthbert  (Op.  Min.,  Stevenson),  cap.  27.  Sim. 
Durh.,  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  (Twysden,  Dec.  Script.),  i.  9. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19. 

3  See  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  iii.  171,  note. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


369 


and  Hexham  remained  in  the  hands  of  their  former  chap.vii. 
occupants.1  The  submission  of  Wilfrid  was  the  last  The 
success  of  Theodore  in  his  plan  of  organization;  it  and  the 
was  soon  followed,  indeed,  by  the  primate’s  death,  in  Kingdoms- 
690.  His  work,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  simply  659-690. 
an  organization  of  the  episcopate,  for  with  the  sta¬ 
tion  or  revenues  of  the  lower  clergy  the  archbishop 
does  not  seem  to  have  dealt.  But  when  once  the 
broad  outlines  of  this  organization  had  been  laid 
down  in  his  arrangement  of  dioceses,  the  internal 
development  of  the  English  Church  followed  the 
general  mode  of  other  churches.  The  settlement  of 
the  episcopate  was  succeeded  during  the  next  hun¬ 
dred  years  by  the  development  of  a  parish  system. 

The  loose  system  of  the  mission-station,  the  monas¬ 
tery  from  which  priest  and  bishop  went  forth  on 
journey  after  journey  to  preach  and  baptize,  as  Ai- 
dan  wrent  forth  from  Lindisfarne,  or  Cuthbert  from 
Melrose,  naturally  disappeared  as  the  land  became 
Christian.  The  missionaries  became  settled  clergy. 

The  township,  or  group  of  townships,  which  fell 
within  the  holding  or  patronage  of  an  English  noble 
or  landowner  became  the  parish,  and  his  chaplain  its 
parish  priest,  as  the  king’s  chaplain  had  become  the 
bishop,  and  the  kingdom  his  diocese.  A  settled 
revenue  and  a  fixed  code  of  law  were  the  other  press¬ 
ing  needs  of  the  ecclesiastical  order ;  and  at  the  close 
of  the  eighth  century  a  source  of  permanent  endow¬ 
ment  for  the  clergy  was  found  in  the  revival  of  the 
Jewish  payment  of  tithes,  and  in  the  annual  gift  to 
Church  purposes  of  a  tenth  of  the  produce  of  the 


1  Eddi,  cap.  43,  44. 

24 


370 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VII. 

The 
Church 
and  the 
Kingdoms. 

659-690. 


soil ;  while  discipline  within  the  Church  itself  was 
provided  for  by  an  elaborate  code  of  sin  and  pen¬ 
ance,1  in  which  the  principle  of  compensation  which 
lay  at  the  root  of  Teutonic  legislation  crept  into  the 
relations  between  God  and  the  soul. 


1  The  first  English  penitential  is  that  of  Theodore,  which  may  be 
found  in  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  iii.  173,  etc. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


371 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  THREE  KINGDOMS. 

690-829. 

For  the  next  hundred  years,  from  the  death  of 
Theodore  to  the  accession  of  Ecgberht,  the  Church 
which  the  primate  had  moulded  into  shape  exercised 
an  ever-deepening  influence  on  English  feeling.  In 
spite  of  the  continuance  of  political  disunion,  the 
drift  towards  a  national  unity  grew  more  and  more 
irresistible.  If  England  could  not  find  a  national 
life  in  the  supremacy  of  any  of  its  states,  it  found 
such  a  life  in  the  Church  ;  and  while  the  energies  of 
its  secular  powers  were  wasted  in  jealousy  or  strife, 
the  weight  of  the  Church  which  embraced  them  all 

O 

became  steadily  greater.  But  throughout  the  whole 
of  this  period  it  was  the  Church  alone  which  ex¬ 
pressed  this  national  consciousness.  Politically,  the 
hope  of  a  national  union  grew  fainter  with  every  year, 
and  at  the  moment  of  Theodore’s  death  such  a  hope 
seemed  almost  at  an  end.  Northumbria  had  defi¬ 
nitely  sheered  off  into  provincial  isolation ;  and  the 
event  which  marked  the  close  of  Theodore’s  pri¬ 
macy — the  revival  of  the  West  Saxons — completed 
that  parting  of  the  land  between  three  states  of  near¬ 
ly  ecjual  power  out  of  which  it  seemed  impossible 
that  unity  could  come. 

Since  their  overthrow  at  Faddiley,  a  hundred 


Political 
disunion 
f  Britain. 


37  2 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  viii.  years  before,  the  West  Saxons  had  been  weakened 
The  by  anarchy  and  civil  war.  So  terribly  had  their 
Kingdoms,  strength  been  broken  that  even  the  Britons  had  in 
690-829.  turn  assailed  them,  while  both  of  the  rival  English 
ThTwest  Powers  had  attacked  and  defeated  them.  Eadwine 
Saxons,  had  routed  them  with  a  great  slaughter.  Penda  had 
not  only  routed  them,  but  taken  from  them  their 
lands  along  the  lower  Severn.  Wulfhere  had  car¬ 
ried  on  the  struggle  with  the  same  success :  he  had 
torn  from  them  the  supremacy  over  Essex  and  Lon¬ 
don,  which  they  had  won  after  the  wreck  of  /Ethel- 
berht’s  overlordship,  and  then,  pushing  across  the 
Thames,  had  mastered  the  West-Saxon  district  of 
Surrey  to  the  south  of  it.  But,  in  spite  of  these 
losses,  the  real  strength  of  the  Gewissas  had  been  in 
no  way  lessened.  Their  defeats  had  been  simply 
owing  to  their  internal  divisions,  and  these  divisions 
never  broke  that  oneness  which  was  the  special 
characteristic  of  their  national  life.  Mercia  had 
been  made  by  the  fusion  of  many  different  states, 
and  even  Northumbria  had  been  created  by  the 
forced  union  of  two  warring  peoples.  But  Wessex 
had  grown  into  being  through  the  simple  extension 
over  its  surface  of  one  West-Saxon  people;  and 
when  divisions  rent  it  asunder,  they  were  divisions, 
not  in  the  body  of  the  people  itself,  but  simply  in  its 
kingly  house.  Each  fragment  of  Welsh  ground,  as 
it  was  won,  seems  to  have  been  made  into  an  under¬ 
kingdom  for  some  one  of  the  royal  kin ;  and  it  was 
the  continual  struggle  of  these  under-kings  against 
the  ruler  whom  they  owned  as  the  head-king  of  the 
race — a  struggle  begotten,  no  doubt,  from  the  yet 
more  fatal  contest  of  the  houses  of  Ceawlin  and 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


•  373 

Cutha  for  the  head-kingship  itself — which  distracted  chap.  vm. 
the  energies  of  the  West  Saxons.1  The 

But  whenever  these  causes  of  distraction  were  re-  Kingdoms, 
moved,  each  interval  of  order  showed  that  the  war-  69^29. 
like  visfor  of  the  people  was  as  sn*eat  as  of  old.  A  „  — ,  , 

°  1  1  °  ^  Revival  of 

short  restoration  of  tranquillity  under  Cenwealh  s-uf-  Wessex. 
ficed,  as  we  have  seen,  to  give  them  back  their  supe¬ 
riority  over  the  Britons,  and  to  push  their  frontier 
to  the  Parret.2 3  A  second  interval  of  order  in  682 
strengthened  King  Centwine  to  drive  the  Britons  as 
far  as  the  Ouantocks.  And  at  this  moment  a  third 
rally  of  the  Gewissas  enabled  them  to  turn  on  their 
assailants  to  the  east,  and  again,  after  a  few  years’ 
struggle,  to  take  rank  with  the  two  rival  powers  of 
Britain.  Losses  and  gains,  indeed,  had  strangely  al¬ 
tered  the  aspect  of  Wessex  since  the  days  of  Ceaw- 
lin.  In  those  days  its  western  border  stopped  at 
Selwood  and  the  valley  of  the  Frome,  while  its  fut¬ 
ure  extension  pointed  northward  from  the  territory 
it  had  won  on  the  Cotswolds  and  the  Severn  valley 
towards  the  valleys  of  the  Weaver  and  the  Dee.  But 
in  the  years  that  had  passed  since  Ceawlin’s  fall,  not 
only  had  any  extension  of  Wessex  in  this  direction 
become  impossible,  but  she  had  actually  lost  the  ter¬ 
ritory  of  the  Hwiccas,  and  her  northern  frontier  ran 
along  the  Avon  by  Bath  to  the  upper  valley  of  the 
Thames.  The  only  part  of  Central  Britain  which 
she  preserved  at  this  time  was  the  district  of  the 
Four  Towns — a  district  equivalent  to  our  Oxford¬ 
shire  and  Buckinghamshire;  while  on  the  east  she 

1  Freeman’s  “  Ine,”  pt.  i.,  Somersetshire  Archaeol.  Proceedings, 

vol.  xviii. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  652,  658,  682. 


374 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


690-829. 


chap,  viii.  had  lost  Surrey  and  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  had  been 
The  even  forced  to  cede  to  the  Mercian  king  the  little 
Kingdom?.  Jutish  districts  of  the  Meonwaras,  on  the  Southamp¬ 
ton  Water.  It  seemed  as  if  her  extension  could  now 
be  only  to  the  southwest;  and  in  this  quarter  the 
conquests  of  Cenwealh  and  Centwine,  carrying  their 
frontier  in  this  region  as  far  as  the  Ouantocks,  had 
already  added  to  Wessex  a  reach  of  territory  whose 
extent  and  fertility  did  much  to  compensate  for  the 
losses  elsewhere. 

But  the  West  Saxons  were  far  from  consenting  to 
sout/urn  be  permanently  shut  in  on  the  east  by  the  border- 
B’“‘u line  that  Wulfhere  had  drawn  round  them.  When 
Ceadwalla,  a  king  of  Ceawlin’s  line,  mounted  the 
West-Saxon  throne  in  685,'  and,  after  crushing  the 
rival  under-kings  of  the  House  of  Cerdic,  gathered  all 


Its  con¬ 
quest  of 


the  Gewissas  beneath  his  sway,  the  strength  of  his 
realm  was  at  once  seen  in  the  rapidity  with  which  it 
broke  through  this  frontier.  In  some  months  of 
fierce  fighting,  Ceadwalla  again  set  up  the  West- 
Saxon  supremacy  over  Sussex,  and  made  the  Isle  of 
Wight  his  own  after  a  massacre  of  its  inhabitants.1 2 


From  Sussex,  Ceadwalla  pushed  on  to  Kent ;  but 
his  attempt  to  extend  his  rule  over  all  Southern 
Britain  met  with  a  more  luckless  issue.  He  was 
himself  repulsed  in  a  first  campaign ;  a  second  saw 
his  brother  Mul  burned  in  a  house  which  he  was 


1  E.  Chron,  a.  685. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  15,  16.  If  we  accept  Malmesbury’s  state¬ 
ment  (Gest  Pontif. ;  Savile,  Script,  post  Baedam,  p.  133),  Sussex  lay 
within  Hithelberht’s  imperium,  and  passed,  on  the  wreck  of  it,  under 
the  supremacy  of  the  West  Saxons.  In  Wulfhere’s  day  it  was  cer¬ 
tainly  under  Mercia ;  but  it  had  probably  slipped  away  of  late  from 
Mercian  rule,  as  it  had  again  become  heathen. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


375 


plundering;  and  in  688  Ceadwalla  threw  down  his  chap.  vih. 
crown  in  disgust,  and  withdrew  from  the  land  to  die  The 
a  pilgrim  at  Rome.1 *  His  work,  however,  found  bet-  Kingdoms, 
ter  fortunes  in  the  hands  of  his  successor,  Ine.  After  69^29 
the  close  of  a  civil  war  which  broke  out  on  Cead-  ~~ 
walla’s  withdrawal,  Ine,  who,  like  his  predecessor, 
was  of  the  branch  of  Ceawlin,  succeeded  in  again 
uniting  the  Gewissas  under  a  single  sway;  and  so 
vigorous  were  his  attacks  upon  Kent  that,  in  694, 
the  realm  paid  the  blood-fine  for  Mul  and  bowed  to 
the  West-Saxon  supremacy.3  Its  submission  carried 
I ne’s  rule  along  the  whole  southern  coast  from  Dor¬ 
set  to  Thanet ;  and  we  may  believe  that  not  only  the 
whole  land  south  of  the  Thames,  but  also  Essex, 
passed  under  the  West-Saxon  supremacy,  as  we  find 
London  from  this  time  no  longer  in  Mercian  hands, 
but  owning  Ine  as  its  lord.3 

How  these  possessions  were  torn  from  /Ethelred’s  Conquests 

1  B  from 

grasp  we  cannot  tell;  for  under  /Ethel red  Mercian  Dyvuaint. 
history  is  all  but  a  blank,  and  there  is  nothing  to  show 
whether  Ine  owed  his  successes  to  the  sword  or  to 
some  civil  strife  which  distracted  the  Mercian  realm.4 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  686,  687,  688.  Will.  Malm.,  Gest.  Reg.  (Hardy),  i.  46. 

Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  7. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  694.  Will.  Malm.  Gest.  Reg.  i.  48. 

3  Ine  speaks  of  Earconwald,  the  Bishop  of  London  and  the  East 
Saxons  from  675  to  693,  as  “  my  bishop,”  in  the  opening  of  his  Laws 
(Thorpe,  Laws  and  Institutes,  vol.  i.  p.  103).  London  would  thus 
seem  to  have  submitted  before  the  close  of  the  contest  with  Kent. 
In  a  letter  dated  705,  we  have  notice  of  quarrels  between  Ine  and 
the  East -Saxon  rulers  who  had  entertained  exiles  from  Wessex. 
Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  274. 

*  In  697,  Hlithelred's  wife,  Osthryth,  was  put  to  death  by  the  “  pri¬ 
mates”  of  Southumbria  (E.  Chron.  a.  697  ;  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  24). 
After  this  he  seems  to  have  made  over  Southumbria  to  Wulfhere’s 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


376 

chap,  vni.  In  704,  after  a  reign  of  nearly  thirty  years,  Hithelred 
The  withdrew  to  a  monastery;  and  his  nephew  Coenred, 

Kingdoms,  the  son  of  Wulfhere,  succeeded  him  on  the  Mercian 

690-829.  throne.* 1  The  conflict  with  Wessex  was  still,  how- 
ever,  deferred  ;  for  Ine,  content  with  his  gains  south 
of  the  Thames,  turned  to  a  new  field  of  conquest  on 
his  border  in  the  west.  Here  he  took  up  the  work  of 
Cenwealh  and  Centwine  by  marching,  in  710,  on  the 
British  king  Geraint.2  Shrunken  as  it  was  from  its 
old  area,  the  realm  of  Dyvnaint  still  stretched  from 
the  Ouantocks  to  the  Land’s  End,  and  its  king 
seems  to  have  exercised  some  supremacy  across  the 
Bristol  Channel  over  the  princes  of  the  opposite 
coast.3  The  extent  of  Geraint’s  dominions  made 
him  the  first  among  the  British  princes  of  his  day. 
Even  the  English  regarded  him  as  a  powerful  ruler, 
and  Ealdhelm  addressed  him  as  “the  glorious  lord 
of  the  western  realm.”4  But  he  was  unable  to  meet 
the  shock  of  Ine’s  attack,  and  a  hard-fought  battle 
gave  the  West  Saxons  a  fertile  territory  along  the 
Tone,  with  the  districts  of  Crewkerne  and  Ilminster. 
On  the  border  of  the  newly  won  territory,  where  a 
spur  of  the  Black  Downs  runs  out  towards  the  ridge 
of  the  Ouantocks,  the  great  flat  of  which  this  part 
of  Somersetshire  consists  narrows  into  a  mere  neck 
of  land ;  and  in  the  midst  of  this  neck,  on  the  banks 
of  a  little  stream  which  wandered  through  it  to  the 


son,  Coenred,  to  whom  he  gave  up  the  throne  in  704,  retiring  to  the 
Monastery  of  Bardney. 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19,  24.  3  E.  Chron.  a.  710. 

3  See  Freeman’s  “  Ine,”  Somersetshire  Archaeol.  Proceedings,  vol. 

xviii. 

4  “  Domino  gloriosissimo  occidentalis  regni  sceptra  gubernanti.” 
Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  268. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


377 


marshes  of  the  Parret,  Ine  set  up  a  fortress  thatCHAP- V111- 
served  as  an  admirable  military  position  for  the  The 

J  1  .  Threo 

defence  of  his  newly  conquered  territory,  or  as  a  Kingdoms, 
starting-point  for  a  new  advance  on  Dyvnaint.  The  690~729. 
fortress  grew  into  a  town,  and  our  Taunton,  or  Town 
on  the  Tone,  still,  even  as  a  linguistic  borderland, 
preserves  the1  memory  of  this  advance  of  Ine.1 


'graphical  EtlabS 


The  tract  of  country  which  had  passed,  with  the  Somerset. 
successive  conquests  of  Cenwealh,  Centwine,  and  Ine, 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  722:  “Tanton  that  Ine  formerly  built.”  Mr.  El- 
worthy,  in  his  Introduction  to  the  Dialect  of  West  Somerset,  says : 
“The  people  of  the  little  village  of  Ruishton,  only  a  mile  and  a  half 
to  the  east  of  Taunton,  speak  the  eastern  dialect ;  while  at  Bishop’s 
Hull,  one  mile  to  the  west,  they  speak  the  western.” 


378 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  viii.  into  the  hands  of  the  West  Saxons  is  that  which  took 
xhe  the  name  of  the  land  of  the  Somersaetas,  or  our 
Kingdoms.  Somerset.  Few  districts  better  illustrate  the  physi- 
690-829.  cal  and  social  revolution  which  was  wrought  by  the 
English  conquerors.  Under  the  Romans,  it  had 
shared  in  the  wealth  and  prosperity  which  character¬ 
ized  the  country  north  of  the  Avon.  One  of  its 
towns,  Bath,  stood  on  an  equal  footing  with  Glevum 
and  Corinium  in  the  strife  with  the  invaders ;  and 
the  district  around  its  second  town,  Ilchester,  was 
thickly  studded  with  the  villas  of  rich  provincials, 
whose  wealth  was  probably  derived  from  the  lead- 
mines  which  had  been  worked  even  in  British  days 
along  the  crest  of  Mendip.  In  the  chaos  of  native 
rule,  this  wealth  and  order  had  long  passed  away ; 
but  the  raids  of  the  West  Saxons  must  have  com¬ 
pleted  its  ruin.  The  towns  were  left  desolate,  as  else¬ 
where.  Bath,  indeed,  which  had  fallen  into  English 
hands  as  early  as  Ceawlin’s  day,  and  was  now  detach¬ 
ed  from  this  region  as  a  part  of  Mercia,  already  saw 
a  new  life  rising  up  round  the  monastery  which  had 
been  founded  among  its  ruins ;  but  the  peasant  long- 
told  amidst  the  wreck  of  Ilchester  a  legend  of  its  fall. 
Bristol  was  not  as  yet,  and  only  villages  and  hamlets 
broke  the  space  between  Bath  and  Exeter;  while  the 
country-houses  of  the  provincial  landowners  lay  burn¬ 
ed  or  in  ruin,  and  the  mines  from  which  their  wealth 
had  been  drawn  were  abandoned  or  forgotten.  Above 
all,  the  industrial  works  which  the  Romans  had  con¬ 
structed  for  the  drainage  of  the  marshes  that  stretch¬ 
ed  into  the  very  heart  of  the  country  fell  unheeded 
into  decay  ;  the  sea  burst  again  through  the  neglected 
barriers  at  the  mouth  of  the  Parret  and  the  Brue  ; 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


379 


and  the  height  which  is  known  as  the  Tor  rose  like  CHAP- vnI- 
an  island  out  of  a  waste  of  flood-drowned  fen  that  The 
stretched  westward  to  the  Channel.  Kingdoms. 

From  one  of  the  English  families  who  chose  it  as  690T29 
their  settlement  a  little  hamlet  at  the  base  of  the  Tor  ,  ,  , 

Ine  s  rule \ 

took  its  name  of  Glastonbury,  the  burh  of  the  Glaes- 
tings.1 *  The  spot,  however,  was  already  famous  as  a 
religious  shrine  of  the  Britons.  It  had  long  been  a 
place  of  pilgrimage,  for  the  tradition  that  a  second 
Patrick  rested  there  drew  to  it  the  wandering  scholars 
of  Ireland  f  and  the  new  relation  of  Englishmen  and 
Welshmen  was  shown  in  the  reverence  which  Ine 
paid  to  this  British  shrine.  The  monastery  became 
an  English  one,  richly  endowed  by  the  king;3 4  and 
beside  its  “  ancient  church,  built  by  no  art  of  man,” 
a  rude  log-building  left  by  its  Welsh  owners  and  care¬ 
fully  preserved  by  the  English  comers,  Ine  founded 
his  own  abbey-church  of  stone.1  The  same  mingling 
of  the  two  races  is  seen  in  another  conquest  of  this 
time.  Side  by  side  with  their  progress  across  Somer¬ 
setshire,  the  West  Saxons  must  have  been  pushing 
their  way  through  the  woodlands  of  Dorset ;  and  even 
before  Ine’s  conquests  reached  the  Tone,  an  advance 
in  this  quarter  from  the  south  seems  to  have  given 
them  Exeter.  By  an  arrangement  which  marks  the 
new  temper  of  the  conquerors,  Exeter  became  a  double 
city.5  Its  southern  half  was  henceforth  English  ;  its 


1  Kemble,  Saxons  in  England,  i.  465. 

5  “Anon.  Life  of  Dunstan,”  Stubbs’s  Memorials  of  Dunstan,  p.  10. 

3  For  his  grants,  see  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  306. 

4  For  the  successive  churches  of  Glastonbury,  see  Freeman,  “  Ine,” 
pt.  ii.,  Somersetshire  Archseol.  Proceedings,  vol.  xx. 

5  Kerslake,  paper  on  “  Exeter,”  Archseol.  Journal,  vol.  xxx.  p.  214 
et  seq.  Will.  Malm.,  Gest.  Reg.  vol.  i.  p.  214,  says  of  /Fthelstan, 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690  829. 


Ine  and 
Mercia. 


380 

northern — as  is  still  marked  by  the  Celtic  names  of 
the  saints  to  whom  its  churches  in  this  quarter  are 
dedicated — remained  in  the  hands  of  the  Britons. 
The  laws  of  Ine* 1 2  which  still  remain  to  us  show  him 
as  providing  for  the  administrative  needs  of  the  mixed 
population  which  dwelt  in  the  district  that  had  been 
added  to  the  West-Saxon  realm;  and  it  was  perhaps 
the  same  mixed  character  of  its  inhabitants  which  in¬ 
duced  him  to  carry  out  Theodore’s  scheme  of  division 
in  his  own  kingdom,'  and,  while  leaving  Daniel  at 
Winchester  as  bishop  of  the  older  Wessex — that  is 
to  say,  our  Hampshire,  Berkshire,  Surrey,  and  the 
bulk  of  Wiltshire — to  group  the  whole  country  west 
of  Selwood  and  the  Frome  valley  as  a  new  bishopric 
for  his  kinsman  Ealdhelm.3 

From  this  organization  of  his  British  conquests, 
however,  Ine  was  called  away  by  an  attack  on  his 
northern  frontier.  Mercia  had  never  forgiven  the 
loss  of  her  dominion  across  the  Thames,  and  the  new 
strength  which  Wessex  drew  from  her  conquests  in 
Somerset  would  only  spur  the  Midland  Kingdom  to 
a  decisive  struggle  for  the  supremacy  of  the  south. 


“  Illos  (Cornevvallenses)  quoque  impigre  adorsus,  ab  Excestra  quam 
ad  id  temporis  aequo  cum  Anglis  jure  inhabitarant,  cedere  compulit." 

1  Thorpe.  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes,  vol.  i.  pp.  119,  123,  139. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  18. 

3  It  was  in  this  way  that  the  diocese  of  Ealdhelm  came  to  include 
that  portion  of  the  present  Wiltshire  about  Malmesbury  and  Brad¬ 
ford  which  represents  the  forest  tract  which  Cenwealh  had  won,  as 
well  as  Dorset  and  Somersetshire.  Although  the  West-Saxon  shires 
are  of  older  formation  than  those  of  Middle  England,  and,  no  doubt, 
mainly  represent  the  tribal  settlements  of  distinct  West-Saxon  peo¬ 
ples,  yet  I  think  this  diocesan  division  shows  that  the  formation  of 
Wiltshire  with  its  actual  boundaries  is  later  in  date  than  this  divi¬ 
sion  of  the  dioceses  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


381 

In  715,  Ceolred,  the  son  of  /Ethelred,  who  six  years  chap.  vm. 
before  had  succeeded  Coenred  on  the  Mercian  throne,  The 
again  took  up  the  strife.  He  must  have  marched  Kingdoms, 
into  the  very  heart  of  Wessex,1  for  Ine  met  the  foe  69^29 
at  Wanborough,  on  the  chalk  heights  above  the  vale  — 
of  White  Horse,  where  his  ancestor  Ceawlin  had  suf¬ 
fered  his  crowning  defeat  a  century  before.  The  bat¬ 
tle  was  a  long  and  bloody  one ;  but  the  absence  of 
all  account  of  its  issue  shows  that  Ceolred’s  attack 
failed,  and  that  the  hope  of  subjecting  the  West  Sax¬ 
ons  to  a  Mercian  sway  was  for  the  while  at  an  end. 

The  victory  of  Ine,  indeed,  seemed  to  raise  Wessex 
again  to  a  front  rank  among  the  powers  of  Britain. 

But  in  the  hour  of  his  glory  the  king  had  again  to 
face  the  civil  strife  which  was  the  curse  of  Wessex; 

'for,  after  thirty-three  years  of  a  glorious  reign,  the  old 
anarchy  broke  out  in  revolts  of  HLthelings  sprung, 
like  himself,  from  the  blood  of  Cerdic,  but  sprung  from 
the  rival  line  of  Ceol.  Ine,  indeed,  held  his  own.  One 
rebel  Cynewulf,  was  slain ;  another,  Ealdberht,  was 
driven  to  take  refuge  among  the  South  Saxons.2  But 
the  strife  went  on ;  and  a  wild  legend  tells  the  story 
of  the  disgust  which  at  last  drove  Ine  from  the  throne. 

He  had  feasted  royally  at  one  of  his  country-houses, 
and  as  he  rode  from  it  on  the  morrow  his  queen  bade 
him  turn  back  thither.  The  king  returned  to  find 
his  house  stripped  of  curtains  and  vessels,  and  foul 
with  refuse  and  the  dung  of  cattle,  while  in  the  royal 
bed  where  he  had  slept  with  /Ethelburh  rested  a  sow 
with  her  farrow  of  pigs.  The  scene  had  no  need  of 
the  queen’s  comment — “  See,  my  lord,  how  the  fash- 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  715. 


E.  Chron.  a.  721,  725 


8 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  viii.  ion  of  this  world  passeth  away!”1 2  In  726,  Ine  laid 
The  down  his  troubled  crown,  and,  like  his  predecessor 
Kingdoms.  Ceadwalla,  sought  peace  and  death  in  a  pilgrimage 
690-829.  t0  Rome/ 

'Ethdbau  The  withdrawal  of  Ine  and  the  anarchy  of  Wessex 
of  Merda.  roused  anew  the  hopes  of  its  rival  in  Mid-Britain.  In 
718,  a  year  after  his  defeat  by  Ine  at  Wanborough, 
the  Mercian  ruler  Ceolred  fell  frenzy-smitten  at  his 
board,3  and  his  realm  passed  into  the  hands  of  the 
most  vigorous  of  its  kings.  Among  those  who  sought 
Guthlac’s  retirement  at  Crowland  was  /Ethelbald,  a 
son  of  Benda’s  brother  Alweo,  flying  from  Ceolred’s 
hate.  Driven  off  again  and  again  by  the  king’s  pur¬ 
suit,  /Ethelbald  still  returned  to  the  little  hut  he  had 
built  beside  the  hermitage,  and  comforted  himself  in 
hours  of  despair  with  his  companion’s  words.  “  Know1 
how  to  wait,”  said  Guthlac,  “  and  the  kingdom  will 
come  to  thee ;  not  by  violence  or  rapine,  but  by  the 
hand  of  God.”  On  Ceolred’s  death,  indeed,  his  people 
chose  Avthelbald,  who  was  already  famous  for  his 
great  strength  and  bravery,  for  their  king.4  ^Ethel- 
balcl  took  up  again,  with  better  fortunes,  the  enter¬ 
prise  in  which  his  predecessor  had  been  foiled — his 
struggle  for  the  supremacy  of  the  south.  During  the 
first  ten  years  of  his  reign,  indeed,  he  shrank  from  a 
conflict  with  the  victor  of  Wanborough  ;  but  in  the 
anarchy  that  broke  out  on  I ne’s  withdrawal5  Wessex 
lay  helpless  before  him ;  and  in  the  struggle  that  fol- 

1  Malmesbury,  Gest.  Reg.  (Hardy),  vol.  i.  p.  49. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  7. 

3  E.  Chron.  a.  716.  Letter  of  Boniface  to  /Ethelbald.  Stubbs  and 
Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  355. 

4  Malmesbury,  Gest.  Reg.  (Hardy),  vol.  i.  p.  1 1 1  ;  E.  Chron.  a.  716. 

5  E.  Chron.  a.  728. 


Stanford '»  Geograph  {  2£«tab< 


384 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chajvviii.  lowed  /Ethelbald  overran  the  whole  of  the  West- 
The  Saxon  country,  till  his  siege  and  capture  of  the  royal 
Kingdoms,  town  of  Somerton  in  733  seemed  to  end  the  war.1 
690-829  For  twenty  years  the  overlordship  of  Mercia  was  rec- 
—  ognized  by  all  Britain  south  of  the  Humber.  It  was 
at  the  head  of  the  forces,  not  of  Mercia  only,  but  of 
East  Anglia  and  Kent,  as  well  as  of  the  West  Sax¬ 
ons,2  that  /Ethelbald  marched  against  the  Welsh  on 
his  western  frontier ;  and  he  styled  himself  “  King  not 
of  the  Mercians  only,  but  of  all  the  neighboring  peo¬ 
ples  who  are  called  by  the  common  name  of  South¬ 
ern  English.”3 4  He  had,  indeed,  to  meet  constant  out¬ 
breaks  of  revolt  among  his  new  subjects.  But  for 
twelve  years  he  seems  to  have  met  them  with  success  ; 
and  it  was  not  till  754  that  a  general  rising  forced 
him  to  call  his  whole  strength  to  the  field.  At  the 
head  of  his  own  Mercians  and  of  the  subject  hosts 
of  Kent,  Essex,  and  East  Anglia,  Mvthelbald  marched 
to  the  field  of  Burford,  where  the  West  Saxons  were 
again  marshalled  under  the  golden  dragon  of  their 
race.  But  the  numbers  of  his  host  could  not  avert 
his  doom.  After  hours  of  desperate  fighting  in  the 
forefront  of  the  battle,  a  sudden  panic  seized  the  Mer¬ 
cian  king,  and  the  supremacy  of  Mid-Britain  passed 
forever  away,  as  he  fled  first  of  his  army  from  the 
field.1 

While  the  two  powers  of  Southern  Britain  were 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  733. 

3  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  (Arnold),  pp.  119,  121. 

3  Charter  in  Palgrave,  English  Commonwealth,  vol.  ii.  p.  218. 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  752.  (From  the  death  of  Baeda,  in  735,  to  the  reign 
of  Hithelwulf  the  entries  of  the  English  Chronicle  are  wrong  by  two 
years.  See  Stubbs’s  edition  of  Hoveden,  preface  to  vol.  i.  p.  lxxxix. 
ct  scq.)  Huntingdon,  Hist.  Angl.  (Arnold),  p.  121. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


385 

wasting  their  energies  in  this  desperate  struggle, 
Northumbria  remained  apart  in  a  peace  which  was 
only  broken  by  occasional  troubles  on  her  northern 
border  and  by  the  beginnings  of  that  anarchy  which 
at  a  later  time  was  to  wreck  her  greatness.  The  fall 
of  Ecgfrith  in  685  had  shaken,  indeed,  the  fabric  of 
the  realm ;  for  the  triumphant  Piets  pressed  in  upon 
it  from  the  north,  and  drove  Bishop  Trumwine  from 
Abercorn,1  while  their  success  woke  the  Britons  to 
fresh  revolt.  Aldfrith,  however,  a  brother  of  Ecgfrith, 
who  was  called  from  a  refuge  at  Hii  to  the  North¬ 
umbrian  throne,2  showed  himself  in  this  hour  of  need 
worthy  of  the  blood  from  which  he  sprang  by  reas¬ 
serting  his  mastery  over  the  men  of  Cumbria  and 
Galloway,  and  exchanging  the  claim  of  lordship  over 
the  Piets  for  a  profitable  alliance  with  them.  Even 
in  the  north,  however,  his  work  was  limited  within 
the  bounds  of  self-defence ;  and  a  consciousness  of 
weakness  is  seen  in  the  change  which  passes  over 
the  policy  of  his  realm.  All  effort  at  conquest  was 
for  a  while  abandoned  ;  and  the  state  which  had  won 
England  by  its  sword  from  heathendom,  and  given 
her  by  its  victories  the  first  notion  of  a  national  unity, 
turned  to  bestow  on  her  the  more  peaceful  gifts  of 
art,  letters,  and  a  new  poetry.  The  twenty  years  of 
Aldfrith’s  rule  were  years  of  peace  and  order,  in 
which  the  literary  and  artistic  impulse  which  had 
been  given  to  Northumbria  alike  by  the  Celtic  and 
Roman  churches  produced  striking  results.  Letters, 
above  all,  sprang  vigorously  to  the  front.  The  books 
which  Benedict  brought  from  Rome  in  visit  after 

1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  26. 

s  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  26;  Life  of  Cuthbert.  cap.  24. 

25 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690  829. 

ATorthum- 
briti  at 
peace. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


386  • 

chap,  viix.  visit1  quickened  the  intellectual  temper  of  the  coun- 
The  try ;  and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  under  Aldfrith, 
Kingdoms,  himself  a  man  of  learning  and  study,2  Northumbria 
690-829.  became  the  literary  centre  of  Western  Europe.  The 
first  form  the  new  learning  took  was  naturally  a  bio¬ 
graphical  one  ;  at  the  close  of  Aldfrith ’s  reign,  indeed, 
a  school  of  biography  was  already  in  full  vigor,  rem¬ 
nants  of  whose  work  remain  to  us  in  the  anonymous 
Life  of  Cuthbert,  and  in  the  Life  of  Wilfrid  by 
Eddi.3  But  this  biographical  outpouring  soon  lost 
itself  in  a  larger  literary  current,  and  through  the 
troubled  reigns  of  Aldfrith’s  three  successors — Os- 
red,  Coenred,  and  Osric4 — as  well  as  the  more  peace¬ 
ful  reign  of  their  successor,  the  scholarly  Ceolwulf, 
the  learning  of  the  age  seemed  to  be  summed  up  in 
a  Northumbrian  scholar. 

Bada.  Baeda — the  Venerable  Bede,  as  later  times  styled 

him — was  born  in  673,  nine  years  after  the  Synod 
of  Whitby,  on  ground  which  passed  a  year  later  to 
Benedict  Biscop  as  the  site  of  the  great  abbey  which 
he  reared  by  the  mouth  of  the  Wear.3  His  youth 
was  trained  and  his  long  tranquil  life  was  wholly 
spent  at  Jarrow,  in  an  offshoot  of  Benedict’s  house 
which  had  been  founded  by  his  friend  Ceolfrid. 
Baeda  tells  us,  in  his  own  charming  way,  a  story  of  his 


1  Baeda,  Vit.  Abbat.  (ed.  Hussey),  pp.  320,  323. 

2  See  his  purchase  of  a  Cosmography  from  Abbot  Ceolfrid.  Baeda, 
Vit.  Abbat.  (ed.  Hussey),  p.  327. 

3  The  Life  of  Cuthbert  was  the  earlier  of  the  two  works ;  that 
of  Wilfrid  may  be  dated  about  709. 

4  Osred,  who  was  a  mere  boy,  reigned  eleven  years,  from  705  to 
716;  Coenred  two  years,  from  716  to  718;  Osric  eleven  years,  from 
718  to  729 ;  Ceolwulf  eight  years,  from  729  to  737. 

s  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  24;  Vit.  Abbat.  (Hussey’s  Baeda),  p.  318. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  387 

boyhood  there:  how  one  of  the  great  plagues  which  chap.  vm. 
followed  the  Synod  of  Whitby  swept  off  every  monk  The 
who  knew  how  to  sing  in  choir,  save  the  abbot  and  Kingdoms, 
this  little  scholar  of  his ;  and  how  the  two  stoutly  69(^29 
kept  up  the  service,  and,  dropping  only  the  antiphons,  — 
struggled  through  the  psalms,  amidst  much  weeping 
and  sobbing,  till  the  rest  of  the  brethren  were  suffi¬ 
ciently  instructed  in  the  church-chant  to  suffer  the 
full  service  to  be  restored.1  Baeda  never  stirred  from 
Jarrow.  “  I  spent  my  whole  life  in  the  same  mon¬ 
astery,”  he  says,  “  and,  while  attentive  to  the  rule  of 
my  order  and  the  service  of  the  Church,  my  constant 
pleasure  lay  in  learning  or  teaching  or  writing.”2 
The  words  sketch  for  us  a  scholar’s  life,  the  more 
touching  in  its  simplicity  that  it  is  the  life  of  the 
first  great  English  scholar.  The  quiet  grandeur  of 
a  life  consecrated  to  knowledge,  the  tranquil  pleas¬ 
ure  that  lies  in  learning  and  teaching  and  writing;, 
dawned  in  fact  for  Englishmen  in  the  story  of  Brnda. 

While  still  young  he  became  teacher;  and  six  hun¬ 
dred  monks,  besides  strangers  that  flocked  thither 
for  instruction,  formed  his  school  of  Jarrow.3  It  is 
hard  to  imagine  how,  among  the  toils  of  the  school¬ 
master  and  the  duties  of  the  monk,  Basda  could  have 
found  time  for  the  composition  of  the  numerous 
works  that  made  his  name  famous  in  the  West.  But 
materials  for  study  had  accumulated  in  Northumbria 
through  the  journeys  of  Wilfrid  and  Benedict  Biscop 
and  the  libraries  which  were  forming  at  Wearmouth 
and  York.  The  tradition  of  the  older  Irish  teachers 
still  lingered  to  direct  the  young  scholar  into  that 


1  Anon.  Hist.  Abbat.,  in  Opera  Minora  Baedae  (Stevenson),  sec.  14. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  24.  3  Baeda,  Vit.  Abbat.  p.  328. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


388 

charviii. path  of  Scriptural  interpretation  to  which  he  chiefly 
The  owed  his  fame.  Greek,  a  rare  accomplishment  in  the 

Kingdoms.  West,  came  to  him  from  the  school  which  the  Greek 
ct 0-829  Archbishop  Theodore  had  founded  beneath  the  walls 
of  Canterbury;  while  his  skill  in  the  ecclesiastical 
chant  was  derived  from  a  Roman  cantor  whom  Pope 
Vitalian  had  sent  in  the  train  of  Benedict  Biscop. 
Little  by  little,  the  young  scholar  made  himself  mas¬ 
ter  of  the  whole  range  of  the  science  of  his  time : 
he  became,  as  Burke  rightly  styled  him,  “  the  father 
of  English  learning.” 1  The  tradition  of  the  older 
classic  culture  was  revived  for  England  in  his  quo¬ 
tations  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  of  Seneca  and  Cice¬ 
ro,  of  Lucretius  and  Ovid.  Virgil  cast  over  him 
the  spell  that  he  cast  over  Dante ;  verses  from 
the  yEneid  break  his  narratives  of  martyrdoms,  and 
the  disciple  ventures  on  the  track  of  the  great  mas¬ 
ter  in  a  little  eclogue  descriptive  of  the  approach  of 
spring. 

His  iuork.  His  work  was  done  with  small  aid  from  others. 
“  I  am  my  own  secretary,”  he  writes.  “  I  make  my 
own  notes.  I  am  my  own  librarian.”  But  forty- 
five  works  remained  after  his  death  to  attest  his 
prodigious  industry.  In  his  own  eyes  and  those 
of  his  contemporaries,  the  most  important  among 


1  As  a  writer  among  Englishmen  Baeda  had  been  preceded  by  Ald- 
helm,  who  died  in  709,  as  well  as  by  the  anonymous  biographer  of 
Cuthbert  (between  697  and  705).  Eddi,  in  his  biography  of  Wilfrid 
(finished  about  709),  is  his  contemporary ;  for  Baeda's  earliest  works 
seem  to  date  from  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  century  (see  article 
“  Baeda,”  by  Stubbs,  Diet.  Christ.  Biog.  i.  300).  The  De  Sex  JE ta- 
tibus  was  written  in  707.  His  other  Scriptural,  chronological,  and 
biographical  works  preceded  the  Ecclesiastical  History,  which  was 
ended  in  731. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


389 

these  were  the  commentaries  and  homilies  upon  chap.  vm. 
various  books  of  the  Bible  which  he  had  drawn  The 
from  the  writings  of  the  Fathers.  But  he  was  far  Kingdoms, 
from  confining  himself  to  theology.  In  treatises  69<^29 
compiled  as  text-books  for  his  scholars  Baeda  threw 
together  all  that  the  world  had  then  accumulated  in 
astronomy  and  meteorology,  in  physics  and  music, 
in  philosophy,  grammar,  rhetoric,  arithmetic,  medi¬ 
cine.  But  the  encyclopaedic  character  of  his  re¬ 
searches  left  him  in  heart  a  simple  Englishman.  He 
loved  his  own  English  tongue  ;  he  was  skilled  in 
English  song;  his  last  work  was  a  translation  into 
English  of  the  Gospel  of  St.John,  and  almost  the 
last  words  that  broke  from  his  lips  were  some  Eng¬ 
lish  rimes  upon  death.  But  the  noblest  proof  of 
his  love  of  English  lies  in  the  work  which  immortal¬ 
izes  his  name.  In  his  Ecclesiastical  History  of  the 
English  Nation,  which  he  began  just  before  the 
death  of  Aldfrith,  in  704,  Baeda  became  the  first 
English  historian.  His  work  stretches  over  nearly 
a  century  and  a  half,  from  the  landing  of  Augustine 
in  597  to  the  year  731,  in  which  the  old  man  laid 
down  his  pen.  A  prefatory  opening,  compiled  from 
older  writers,  from  legends  and  martyrologies,  sums 
up  the  story  of  Britain  under  the  Romans  and  its 
conquest  by  the  English ;  but  it  is  with  the  landing 
of  the  Roman  missionaries  that  the  work  really  be¬ 
gins.  There  is  little  need  for  Baeda’s  modest  ex- 

O 

cuse.  “  If  in  what  I  have  written  any  one  find  mat¬ 
ters  other  than  what  is  true,  let  him  not  blame  me 
for  cleaving  to  what  is  the  true  rule  of  historic  nar¬ 
rative  and  simply  gathering  from  common  fame  the 
facts  I  have  resolved  to  record  for  the  instruction  of 


390 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 


His  death. 


after-times.”1  What  is  really  marvellous  is  the  pains 
which  he  took  in  collecting  and  sifting  his  informa¬ 
tion.  Where  he  found  friends  as  zealous  as  Albinus 
and  Nothelm  at  Canterbury,  his  story  is  accurate  and 
full.  Even  the  Papal  archives  gave  up  the  letters 
of  Archbishops  Laurentius  and  Honorius  to  his  in¬ 
defatigable  research.  His  work  was,  indeed,  limit¬ 
ed  by  the  difficulty  of  procuring  information  in  the 
ruder  states.  The  history  of  Northumbria,  which 
lay  within  his  own  sphere  of  observation,  is  told  with 
admirable  fulness  and  force.  Wessex,  Mercia,  and 
East  Anglia  fare  worse,  in  spite  of  the  information 
which  reached  Basda  from  Bishop  Daniel  of  Win¬ 
chester  and  the  monks  of  Lastingham ;  but,  fortu¬ 
nately,  they  formed  during  most  of  this  period  the 
least  important  part  of  the  historic  field.  The  con¬ 
version  of  Kent,  the  warfare  of  Penda,  the  fight  of 
Northumbria  for  the  Cross,  the  preaching  of  Aidan, 
the  wanderings  of  Cuthbert  and  Chad — these  were 
the  main  events  which  Baeda  had  to  follow,  and  on 
all  these  he  is  graphic  and  full. 

What  Baeda  owed  to  no  informant  was  his  own  ex¬ 
quisite  faculty  of  story-telling.  His  story  of  Gregory 
in  the  market-place  remains  as  familiar  as  a  house¬ 
hold  word  to  English  children.  The  quaint  anecdotes 
of  Cuthbert,  the  tender  details  of  the  love  that  knit 
Bishop  Aidan  to  King  Oswiu,  are  as  charmingly 
told  as  the  story  of  the  Sparrow  which  marks  the 
conversion  of  Northumbria.  But  no  story  even  of 
Baeda’s  telling  is  so  touching  as  the  story  of  his  death.2 


1  Preface  to  his  Ecclesiastical  History. 

2  Given  by  a  certain  Cuthbert  in  a  letter  to  Cuthwine ;  Sim.  Durh., 
Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  (Twysden),  i.  15. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


391 


Two  weeks  before  the  Easter  of  735,  the  old  man  char  vm. 
was  seized  with  an  extreme  weakness  and  loss  The 
of  breath.  He  still  preserved,  however,  his  usual  Kingdoms, 
pleasantness  and  good-humor,  and,  in  spite  of  pro-  690729 
longed  sleeplessness,  continued  his  lectures  to  the  — 
pupils  about  him.  Verses  of  his  own  English  tongue 
broke  from  time  to  time  from  the  master’s  lip — rude 
rimes  that  told  how  before  the  “  need-fare,”  Death’s 
stern  “  must  go,”  none  can  enough  bethink  him 
what  is  to  be  his  doom  for  good  or  ill.  The  tears 
of  Baeda’s  scholars  mingled  with  his  song.  “  We 
never  read  without  weeping,”  writes  one  of  them. 

So  the  days  rolled  on  to  Ascension -tide,  and  still 
master  and  pupils  toiled  at  their  work,  for  Baeda 
longed  to  bring  to  an  end  his  version  of  St.John’s 
Gospel  into  the  English  tongue  and  his  extracts 
from  Bishop  Isidore.  “  I  don’t  want  my  boys  to 
read  a  lie,”  he  answered  those  who  would  have  had 
him  rest,  “  or  to  work  to  no  purpose  after  I  am 
gone.”  A  few  days  before  Ascension-tide  his  sick¬ 
ness  grew  upon  him,  but  he  spent  the  whole  day 
in  teaching,  only  saying  cheerfully  to  his  scholars, 

“  Learn  with  what  speed  you  may;  I  know  not  how 
long  I  may  last.”  The  dawn  broke  on  another  sleep¬ 
less  night,  and  again  the  old  man  called  his  scholars 
round  him  and  bade  them  write.  “  There  is  still  a 
chapter  wanting,”  said  the  scribe,  as  the  morning 
drew  on,  “  and  it  is  hard  for  thee  to  question  thyself 
any  longer.”  “  It  is  easily  done,”  said  Bmda ;  “take 
thy  pen  and  write  quickly.”  Amid  tears  and  fare¬ 
wells  the  day  wore  on  to  eventide.  “  There  is  yet 
one  sentence  unwritten,  dear  master,”  said  the  boy. 

“  Write  it  quickly,”  bade  the  dying  man.  “It  is 


392 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap. viii. finished  now,”  said  the  little  scribe  at  last.  “You 
The  speak  truth,”  said  the  master ;  “  all  is  finished  now.” 
Kingdoms.  Placed  upon  the  pavement,  his  head  supported  in 
690-829  sch°lars’  arms,  his  face  turned  to  the  spot  where 
—  he  was  wont  to  pray,  Boeda  chanted  the  solemn 
“  Glory  to  God.”  As  his  voice  reached  the  close  of 
his  song,  he  passed  quietly  away. 
ri^  sons  First  among  English  scholars,  first  among  Eng¬ 
lish  theologians,  first  among  English  historians,  it  is 
in  the  monk  of  J arrow  that  English  learning  strikes 
its  roots.  But  the  quiet  tenor  of  his  life  was  broken 
by  the  signs  of  coming  disorganization  in  Northum¬ 
bria;  and  though  this  anarchy  was  quelled  by  the 
scholarly  Ceolwulf,  to  whom  Bceda  dedicated  his  His¬ 
tory,  after  eight  years  of  rule  this  king  laid  down 
his  sword  in  disgust,1 * 3  and  withdrew  to  a  monastery. 
His  reign,  however,  had  been  marked  by  an  ecclesi¬ 
astical  change  which  shows  how  strongly  the  pro¬ 
vincial  feeling  of  severance  in  the  three  kingdoms 
was  struggling  against  the  centralizing  action  of  the 
Church.  At  the  close  of  his  life  the  state  of  things 
which  he  saw  about  him  drew  from  Baeda  a  scheme 
of  religious  reformation,  one  of  whose  chief  features 
was  the  revival  of  the  archbishopric  which  Pope 
Gregory  had  originally  designed  to  set  up  in  the 
north  and  this  suggestion  was  soon  realized  by  the 
occupant  of  the  see  of  York,  Ecgberht,  who  procured 
from  Rome  his  recognition  as  archbishop  in  735.J 
From  this  time,  therefore,  so  far  as  Northumbria  was 
concerned,  the  work  of  Theodore  was  to  a  great  ex- 


1  Sim.  Durh.,  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  (Twysden),  ii.  i. 

3  Epist.  ad  Ecgbertum,  in  Hussey’s  Bseda,  p.  332. 

3  Appendix  Bsedae,  a.  735,  in  Hussey’s  Basda,  p.  314. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


393 


tent  undone;  the  supremacy  of  the  see  of  Canter- chap. vm. 
bury  found  a  rival  across  the  Humber;  and  the  The 
political  isolation  of  the  northern  kingdom  was  re- ^gdoms. 
fleeted  in  its  religious  independence.  The  close  69~29 
connection  of  the  new  see  and  the  northern  throne  — 
was  seen  three  years  later,  in  738,  when  the  arch¬ 
bishop’s  brother,  Eadberht,  became  king  of  the  North¬ 
umbrians.  The  joint  character  of  their  rule  was 
shown  in  the  “  stycas,"  or  copper  pieces  which  were 
coined  in  the  mint  at  York,  and  which  bear  the  leg¬ 
end  of  the  king  on  one  side  and  of  the  primate  on 
the  other.1 

Never  had  the  kingdom  shown  greater  vigor  with-  Eadberht 
in  or  without  than  under  these  two  sons  of  Eata.  Ecgberht. 
Eadberht  showed  himself  from  the  outset  of  his  reign 
an  active  and  successful  warrior.  Though  attacked 
at  the  same  time  on  his  southern  border  by  /Ethel- 
bald  of  Mercia,  he  carried  on  in  740  a  successful  war 
against  the  Piets ; 2  and  ten  years  later  recovered 
from  the  Britons  of  Strathclyde  the  district  of  Kyle 
in  Ayrshire.3  So  great  was  his  renown  that  the 
Frank  king  Pippin  sent  envoys  to  Northumbria 
with  costly  gifts  and  offers  of  his  friendship.4  Mean¬ 
while  Archbishop  Ecgberht  had  shown  as  restless 
an  activity  in  the  establishment  of  a  school  at  York. 

We  have  already  seen  the  return  of  life  to  this  city 
in  the  reign  of  Eadwine,  and,  though  it  seems  to  have 
been  again  forsaken  by  the  kings  of  Bernician  race 
who  followed  him,  it  became  from  Wilfrid’s  days  the 


*  Article  by  Raine  on  “  Ecgberht,”  Diet.  Christ.  Biog.  ii.  50. 

2  Appendix  Bsedse,  a.  740,  Hussey’s  Baeda,  p.  314. 

3  Ibid.  a.  750. 

4  Sim.  Durh.,  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  ii.  3  (Twysden,  p.  11). 


394 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  viii.  religious  centre  of  the  north  ;  while  under  Eadberht, 
The  if  not  before,  it  had  become  its  political  centre.1  The 
Kingdoms,  whole  of  its  northern  quarter  and  much  of  its  eastern 
690-829.  had  been  given  up  to  the  bishop  and  his  clergy  by 
—  Eadwine,  doubtless  because  in  its  then  state  of  aban¬ 
donment  it  was  a  part  of  the  folk-land,  and  remained 
open  to  give ;  and  in  the  heart  of  it  the  king  had 
reared  a  little  wooden  chapel  for  Paulinus  and  be¬ 
gun  a  larger  church  of  stone.2  But  his  fall  stopped 
the  progress  of  this  building;  and  Wilfrid  in  670 
found  the  church  almost  in  ruins,  its  windows  cover¬ 
ed  with  mere  trellis-work,  and  its  roof  rotted  with 
the  rain.3  The  bishop’s  energy,  however,  soon  made 
this  church  a  rival  even  of  his  buildings  in  Ripon 
and  Hexham,  and  its  enlargement  and  decoration 
were  actively  carried  on  by  Ecgberht,  by  whose  days 
York  had  become  the  settled  capital  of  the  kingdom. 


1  How  completely  even  the  main  lines  of  communication  which 
ran  through  the  older  town  were  blotted  out  by  the  time  of  the 
English  settlement,  we  may  see  from  comparing  a  ground-plan  of 
the  early  English  streets  with  those  of  their  Roman  predecessors. 
(For  early  York,  see  a  map  in  Mr.  Freeman’s  Norman  Conquest, 
vol.  iv.  p.  202.)  We  see  from  this  that  the  road  from  Aldborough 
to  the  south,  if  it  still  crossed  the  English  city  in  the  line  of  the 
Roman  Way,  diverged  widely  from  this  line  to  cross  the  Fosse ; 
while  the  road  to  Malton,  which  crossed  the  former  at  right  angles 
in  the  heart  of  Eboracum,  ceased  to  exist  in  the  English  York,  save 
in  a  fragment  called  Stone  Gate.  Indeed,  the  minster  with  its  build¬ 
ings  lay  right  across  what  had  been  the  line  of  it.  The  bridge  by 
which  it  crossed  the  Ouse,  and  the  gate  by  which  it  left  the  town, 
equally  disappeared.  The  name  of  Stone  Gate  or  Street,  which 
marks  a  part  of  this  line  where  the  modern  highway  coincided  with 
the  line  of  the  old  Roman  road,  would  of  itself  suggest  that  else¬ 
where  the  new  lines  of  occupation  lay,  not  along  the  paved  cause¬ 
ways  of  old  Eboracum,  but  along  unpaved  lanes  which  wandered 
over  its  site. 

2  Basda,  Hist.  Eccl.  ii.  14. 


3  Eddi,  cap.  16. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


395 


Ecgberht  not  only  established  a  school  in  connection  chap.  vm. 
with  his  church,  but  supplied  its  educational  needs  The 
by  gathering  the  largest  library  which  had  yet  been  Kingdoms, 
seen  in  Britain — a  library  in  which  Pliny  and  some  69(^£9 
at  least  of  the  works  of  Aristotle,  the  orations  of  — 
Cicero,  and  the  poems  of  Virgil,  Statius,  and  Lucan, 
might  be  seen  side  by  side  with  grammarians  and 
scholiasts,  and  in  which  the  works  of  two  English¬ 
men  at  least,  Ealdhelm  and  Baeda,  mingled  them¬ 
selves  with  the  long  roll  of  Greek  and  Latin  Fathers.1 

1  The  list  which  Alcuin  gives  us  in  his  poem  De  Pontificibus 
(Raine’s  Historians  of  Church  of  York,  p.  395)  is  of  singular  inter¬ 
est,  as  the  first  catalogue  which  we  have  of  any  English  library: 

“  Illic  invenies  veterum  vestigia  patrum, 

Ouidquid  habet  pro  se  Latio  Romanus  in  orbe, 

Graecia  vel  quidquid  transmisit  clara  Latinis, 

Hebraicus  vel  quod  populus  bibit  imbre  superno, 

Africa  sucifluo  vel  quidquid  lumine  sparsit. 

Ouod  pater  Hieronymus,  quod  sensit  Hilarius,  atque 
Ambrosius  praesul,  simul  Augustinus,  et  ipse 
Sanctus  Athanasius,  quod  Orosius  edit  avitus  : 

Ouidquid  Gregorius  summus  docet,  et  Leo  papa  ; 

Basilius  quidquid,  Fulgentius  atque,  coruscant, 

Cassiodorus  item,  Chrysostomus  atque  Johannes. 

Ouidquid  et  Athelmus  docuit,  quid  Beda  magister. 

Quae  Victorinus  scripsere  Boetius  atque 
Historici  veteres,  Pompeius,  Plinius,  ipse 
Acer  Aristoteles,  rhetor  quoque  Tullius  ingens, 

Quid  quoque  Sedulius,  vel  quid  canit  ipse  Juvencus, 

Alcimus  et  Clemens,  Prosper,  Paulinus,  orator, 

Quid  Fortunatus,  vel  quid  Lactantius  edunt. 

Quae  Maro  Virgilius,  Statius,  Lucanus  et  auctor ; 

Artis  grammaticae  vel  quid  scripsere  magistri, 

Quid  Probus  atque  Focas,  Donatus,  Priscianusve, 

Servius,  Euticius,  Pompeius,  Comminianus. 

Invenies  alias  perplures,  lector,  ibidem. 

Egregios  studiis,  arte  et  sermone  magistros, 

Plurima  qui  claro  scripsere  volumina  sensu  ; 

Nomina  sed  quorum  praesenti  in  carmine  scribi 
Longius  est  visum,  quam  plectri  postulet  usus.” 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND! 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 

The  fill! 
of  North¬ 
umbria. 


396 

Ecgberht  was  himself  the  leading  teacher  in  his 
school,  instructing  its  clerks  or  discussing  literary 
questions  with  them  ;  and  the  efficiency  of  his  teach¬ 
ing  is  shown  by  such  a  scholar  as  Alcuin.  Scholars, 
indeed,  flocked  to  him  from  every  country;  for  it  was 
at  a  moment  when  learning  seemed  to  be  flickering 
out  both  in  Ireland  and  among  the  Franks  that  the 
school  of  York  gathered  to  itself  the  intellectual 
impulse  which  had  been  given  to  Northumbria  by 
Baida,  and  preserved  that  tradition  of  learning  and 
culture  which  was  to  spread  again,  through  Alcuin, 
over  the  nations  of  the  West.  The  school,  indeed, 
long  survived  its  founder,  for  the  glory  of  the  sons 
of  Eata  proved  but  brief.  In  756,  Eadberht  continued 
his  attacks  on  Strathclyde  ;  and,  allying  himself  with 
the  Piets,  made  himself  master  even  of  its  capital, 
Alcluyd,  or  Dumbarton.  But  at  the  moment  when 
his  triumph  seemed  complete,  his  army  was  utterly 
destroyed 1  as  it  withdrew  homewards,  only  a  few 
days  after  the  city’s  surrender ;  and  so  crushing  was 
this  calamity  that,  two  years  after  it,  not  only  did 
Eadberht  withdraw  to  a  monastery  and  leave  the 
throne  to  his  son  Osulf,2  but  the  archbishop  joined 
his  brother  in  retirement,  till  both  were  laid  side  by 
side  in  the  minster  at  York.3  With  the  death  of  the 
two  sons  of  Eata,  the  peace  of  the  kingdom  disap¬ 
peared.  Men  of  unknown  lineage  disputed  the  throne 
with  kings  of  the  royal  stock ;  revolts  of  the  nobles 
added  to  the  general  disorder ;  and  the  fierce  blood- 
shedding  which  characterized  the  successive  strifes 


1  Sim.  Dunelm.  Gest.  Reg.  a.  756  (Twysden,  p.  106). 

3  Sim.  Dunelm.  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  ii.  3. 

3  Sim.  Dunelm.  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  ii.  3  (Twysden,  p.  16). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


397 


for  the  crown  showed  the  moral  deterioration  of  the  CHAP- VI!I- 
country.  Isolated  as  Northumbria  had  become,  its  The 
isolation  became  even  more  pronounced  in  these  Kingdoms, 
fifty  years  of  anarchy ;  for  even  the  intermarriages  690I729 
of  its  kings  with  the  other  kingly  houses  all  but 
ceased,  and  the  northern  realm  hardly  seemed  to 
form  part  of  the  English  people. 

In  spite,  however,  of  this  anarchy,  Northumbria  re-  England 
mained  to  the  last  the  chief  seat  of  English  religion  Continent. 
and  English  learning.  In  the  midst  of  its  political 
disorder,  learning  and  the  love  of  books  still  flour¬ 
ished  at  Jarrow  and  York,  and  at  the  close  of  the 
century  a  Northumbrian  scholar  was  the  centre  of 
the  literary  revival  at  the  court  of  the  Franks.  It  is 
the  correspondence  of  this  scholar,  Alcuin,  which 
first  reveals  to  us  a  change  that  was  at  this  moment 
passing  over  our  history.  Till  now  the  fortunes  of 
the  English  people  had  lain  wholly  within  the  bounds 
of  the  Britain  they  had  won.  With  what  was  left  of 
the  Roman  Empire  the  new  country  held  no  rela¬ 
tions  whatever.  With  the  kindred  German  peoples 
across  the  Channel  its  intercourse  was  scant  and  un¬ 
important.  But  in  the  eighth  century  our  national 
horizon  suddenly  widened,  and  the  fortunes  of  Eng¬ 
land  became  linked  to  the  general  fortunes  of  West¬ 
ern  Christendom.  The  change  was  brought  about 
by  the  work  of  English  missionaries  in  the  mother- 
country  of  Englishmen.  While  zElla  and  Cerdic 
were  overrunning  Britain,  the  mass  of  the  tribes  be¬ 
tween  Friesland  and  the  Elbe  remained  in  their  old 
homeland,  unchanged  in  religion  or  in  institutions. 

Little  or  no  intercourse  seems  to  have  gone  on  be¬ 
tween  these  Saxons  and  their  offshoot  on  British 


39§ 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 


The 

Franks. 


soil.  But  the  tie  of  kinship  had  never  been  forgot¬ 
ten  ;  and  from  the  moment  when  a  storm  drove  Bishop 
Wilfrid  in  677 1  to  the  Frisian  coast,  a  new  interest 
in  the  race  from  which  their  blood  was  drawn  sprang 
up  among  Englishmen.  Even  in  the  dark  hour  of 
Nectansmere  a  Northumbrian  scholar  was  calling 
for  mission  priests  to  labor  “  among  the  nations  in 
Germany  to  whom  the  English  or  Saxons  who  now 
inhabit  Britain  are  known  to  owe  their  blood  and 
origin;”2  but  nothing  had  been  actually  done  for 
their  conversion  when  a  way  for  mission  labor  was 
opened  by  the  sword  of  the  Franks. 

The  Franks  had  long  stood  first  in  power  among 
the  German  peoples  who  settled  amidst  the  wreck 
of  Rome.  While  Jute  and  Engle  and  Saxon  were 
creeping  slowly  along  the  southern  shores  of  Britain, 
their  Frankish  neighbors  on  the  Lower  Rhine  had 
swept  over  Northern  Gaul,  over  the  southern  king¬ 
dom  of  the  Visigoths,  and  over  the  Burgundian  realm 
in  the  valley  of  the  Rhone.  Nor  were  the  Frank  con¬ 
quests  limited  to  what  had  been  Roman  ground. 
Eastward  across  the  Rhine  other  German  tribes — 
Alemannians,  Thuringians,  and  Bavarians — became 
their  tributaries ;  and  at  the  time  when  Augustine 
traversed  Frankland  on  his  way  to  Kent  their  lord- 
ship  stretched  from  the  Pyrenees  to  the  Scheldt,  and 
from  the  Bay  of  Biscay  to  the  Inn.  Even  at  this 
early  time,  therefore,  no  other  Teutonic  state  could 
vie  either  in  power  or  extent  of  rule  with  a  realm 
which  seemed  already  more  than  a  match  for  what 
remained  of  the  Empire  of  Rome.  But  it  was  long 


1  Bseda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  19. 


3  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  9. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


399 


before  the  influence  of  the  Franks  told  as  it  might CHAP- vin- 
have  been  expected  to  tell  on  the  general  politics  of  The 
the  West.  The  mass  of  tribes  and  principalities  Kingdoms, 
which  owned  their  name  or  bowed  beneath  their  69{F^29 
sway  was  too  loosely  bound  together  to  exercise  any  — 
definite  pressure  on  the  world  without  them.  For  a 
while,  indeed,  their  anarchy  seemed  to  undo  all  that 
their  early  victories  had  done.  In  the  midst  of  the 
seventh  century  their  power  over  Germany  had  all 
but  gone.  Though  their  hold  remained  unshaken  in 
the  central  districts  between  the  Neckar  and  the 
Main,  Bavarians  and  Swabians  had  alike  thrown  off 
their  rule  to  the  south,  while  northwards  the  Saxons 
pushed  forward  from  the  Weser  to  the  Rhine,  and 
the  Frisians  won  the  lands  round  the  mouth  of  the 
Scheldt.  But  it  was  just  at  this  moment  of  weak¬ 
ness  that  the  anarchy  of  the  realm  came  suddenly  to 
an  end,  and  the  Frankish  states  drew  together  into  a 
power  which  overawed  the  world.  In  687  a  victory 
at  Testri  placed  the  Eastern  Franks  of  the  Rhine 
and  the  Meuse  at  the  head  of  their  race,  and  the  rule 
of  their  older  royal  house,  the  Merwings,  was  practi¬ 
cally  set  aside  for  that  of  the  leader  of  these  Eastern 
Franks,  Pippin  of  Herstal. 

The  victory  of  Pippin  changed  at  a  blow  the  polit-  Engjat"^ 
ical  aspect  of  Western  Christendom.  Primarily  it  Franks. 
was  a  rally  of  the  Frank  race  against  pressure  from 
without;  and  the  mass  of  warring  tribes  had  no 
sooner  drawn  together  than  the  recovery  of  Lower 
Friesland  showed  their  resolve  to  build  up  again  the 
supremacy  over  Germany  which  the  Franks  had  in 
great  measure  lost.  But  Testri  was  destined  to  have 
far  wider  issues  than  the  mere  restoration  of  the 


400 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  yin,  realm  of  Chlodowig.  It  was  the  victory  of  Pippin 
The  which  drew  England  into  connection  with  the  fort- 

Three  ° 

Kingdoms,  unes  of  the  Franks.  A  friendly  intercourse  seems 
cso-829.  have  gone  on  between  the  two  peoples  ever  since 
their  settlement  on  either  side  of  the  Channel.  There 
is  little,  indeed,  to  indicate  the  existence  of  any  early 
political  relations  between  them,  but  the  bond  of  a 
common  religion  drew  the  two  countries  more  closely 
together.  Kings  of  East  Anglia  took  refuge  among 
the  Franks  from  the  sword  of  Penda.1  Frankish 
missionaries,  such  as  Agilberct,  made  their  way  into 
Britain.  English  children  were  sent  to  be  trained  in 
Frank  monasteries,  and  the  daughters  of  Kentish 
kings  became  Frankish  abbesses.2  The  passion  for 
pilgrimages  which  arose  at  the  close  of  the  seventh 
century  made  English  travellers  familiar  with  the 
Frank  kingdom  as  they  passed  through  it  on  their 
way  to  Rome.3  But  it  was  not  till  the  victory  of 
Testri  that  the  connection  of  England  and  the 
Franks  became  in  any  way  a  political  connection. 
Victorious  over  the  Frieslanders  of  the  Scheldt,  the 
Frankish  leader  was  anxious  to  complete  his  victory 
by  their  conversion,  and  the  zeal  of  Englishmen  to 
win  their  kindred  to  the  faith  supplied  him  with  mis¬ 
sionaries.  If  Pippin  did  not  summon  the  Northum¬ 
brian  Willibrord  and  his  twelve  fellow-preachers  to 
his  court  in  690,  he  at  any  rate  assured  them,  when 
they  appeared  there,  of  his  support  and  protection  in 
their  mission  work  along  the  Northern  Sea.4 


1  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iii.  18. 

2  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  iv.  23  ;  ibid.  ii.  20. 

3  Charles  to  Offa.  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  pp.  496, 

497.  *  Baeda,  Hist.  Eccl.  v.  10. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


401 


Willibrord  fixed  his  bishop’s  seat  at  Utrecht,  and  chap.  vim. 
labored  for  forty  years  among  the  stubborn  Fries-  The 
landers ;  while  the  sword  of  Pippin  and  his  son,  Kingdoms. 
Charles  Martel,  was  slowly  building  up  again  the  690l829 
empire  of  the  Franks.  But  the  work  of  Willibrord  ~ 

l/l€  /*.  Jl cr~ 

was  eclipsed  by  that  of  the  West  Saxon  Winfrith,  or  lishmit 
Boniface,  who  crossed  to  the  Continent  in  the  closing  i,0"d>us' 
years  of  Ine’s  reign,  or  about  7 1 8.1  Boniface,  like 


1  The  work  of  Boniface  lies  too  far  outside  English  bounds  to 
make  a  part  of  our  story.  But  in  European  history  his  part  is  a 
great  one.  His  English  name  was  Winfrith ;  he  was  born  in  the 
last  quarter  of  the  seventh  century  at  Crediton,  and  brought  up  in 
a  monastery  in  or  near  Exeter.  He  became  monk  at  Nutsell  or 
Netley  by  Winchester,  a  priest  at  thirty,  and  so  famous  for  learning 
that  he  was  deputed  by  Ine  to  attend  a  council  convoked  by  Arch¬ 
bishop  Berhtwald.  He  sailed  soon  after  716,  with  two  or  three 
monks,  to  Utrecht;  found  the  Frisian  king  Radbod  at  war  with 
Charles  Martel,  and,  looking  on  missionary  work  there  as  hopeless, 
returned  home  again,  and  with  letters  from  Bishop  Daniel  visited 
Gregory  II.  at  Rome,  where  the  Pope  gave  him  a  commission  to 
evangelize  Central  Europe.  He  returned  by  Lombardy,  and,  cross¬ 
ing  the  Alps  into  the  Duchy  of  Bavaria,  proceeded  thence  to  Thu¬ 
ringia,  a  country  half  heathen,  half  converted  by  Scot  missionaries. 
Here,  however,  in  the  midst  of  his  labors  of  organization  and  disci¬ 
pline,  he  heard  of  the  death  of  Radbod  (719),  and  he  at  once  started 
for  Friesland,  where  for  three  years  he  assisted  Willibrord  ;  then  re¬ 
turning  to  Thuringia  in  the  wake  of  Charles  Martel’s  victorious 
troops,  he  conducted  a  mission  among  Hessian  heathens,  between 
the  Middle  Rhine  and  the  Elbe,  till  723,  when  he  again  visited  Rome 
and  Gregory.  He  was  now  made  “  regionary  bishop,”  assuming  the 
name  of  Bonifacius,  and  was  bound  by  a  stringent  oath  of  fealty  to 
the  Pope.  Starting  again  with  commendatory  letters  to  Charles 
Martel,  then  in  a  fresh  tide  of  conquests,  he  gained  his  support,  and 
again  attacked  the  Hessians  and  felled  their  sacred  oak  at  Geismar. 
A  constant  correspondence  with  England  drew  to  him  monks,  mon¬ 
ey,  and  books  in  plenty;  and  in  731  a  new  pope,  Gregory  III.,  made 
him  archbishop  and  “  legate,”  so  that  he  was  enabled  to  correct  re¬ 
fractory  monks  and  control  chaos  in  Thuringia,  as  well  as  found 
missions  and  monasteries  near  Erfurt,  Fritzlar,  and  Homburg  in 
Hesse.  In  738,  with  a  great  train  of  monks  and  converts,  he  visited 
Rome  for  the  last  time;  returned  through  Bavaria,  and  organized 

26 


402 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  vni.  his  predecessor,  looked  for  support  to  the  Frankish 
The  kings.  “  Without  your  aid,”  he  owned  to  Charles 
Kingdoms.  Martel,  “  I  could  neither  control  the  people  nor  de- 
690-829.  fend  the  priests,  nor  prevent  pagan  and  idolatrous 
—  rites  in  Germany.”  And  the  Frank  aid  was  un¬ 
grudgingly  given ;  it  was  the  threats  of  Charles 
which  shielded  the  missionary  as  he  levelled  the 
heathen  temples  to  the  ground  and  hewed  down  the 
oak  of  Thunder  in  the  sacred  grove  by  Fritzlar. 
In  this  strange  alliance  of  the  Gospel  and  the  sword, 
the  sword  necessarily  played  the  weightier  part. 
Had  the  Germans,  indeed,  been  willing  to  listen  to 
mere  preaching,  the  preaching  of  the  English  mis¬ 
sionaries  was  hardly  such  as  to  win  them  to  the 
faith  of  Christ.  A  Frisian  king  who  paused  on  the 
brink  of  baptism  to  ask  whither  his  fathers  had  gone 
who  had  died  unchristened  was  told  that  they  had 
gone  to  hell.  “  Whither  they  have  gone  will  I  go  !” 
said  Radbod,  and  turned  back  from  the  font.  But 
preaching  in  any  shape  was  wasted  on  men  who 
saw  in  the  missionaries  only  an  advance  guard  of 

the  Church  there  by  founding  four  sees  in  that  duchy.  Still  backed 
by  Charles  Martel's  sons,  especially  Pippin,  he  wielded  authority 
over  Austrasia  and  Neustria,  and  rose  into  the  greatest  Church  fig¬ 
ure  of  the  day.  In  743  he  became  Archbishop  of  Mainz,  with  a  dio¬ 
cese  stretching  from  Coin  to  Strasburg,  and  from  Worms  to  Coire  ; 
and  showed  his  activity  by  founding  sees  at  Wurzburg,  Erfurt,  Eich- 
stadt,  and  in  Hesse  at  Buraburg,  while  in  744  he  founded  the  Abbey 
of  Fulda  in  the  great  forest  between  Hesse  and  Bavaria.  In  751 
Pippin  was  made  king  through  his  means ;  but  Boniface,  from  his 
letters,  seems  not  to  have  been  present  at  the  coronation.  He  was, 
in  fact,  withdrawing  from  active  life.  In  753  he  named  Lull  his  suc¬ 
cessor  at  Mainz ;  and  now,  “  infirm  and  decrepit  in  body,”  set  out 
for  Frisia,  and  was  martyred  there  June  4.  For  his  life,  besides  the 
passages  in  Baeda,  we  have  a  biography  by  Willibrord,  and  his  col¬ 
lected  letters. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


403 


the  Frank  invaders,  and  in  the  Gospel  a  badge  of 
national  slavery.  The  old  religious  tolerance  of  the 
German  peoples  disappeared.  The  new  faith  ad¬ 
vanced  and  drew  back  with  the  victories  or  defeats 
of  the  Franks.  Here  and  there  the  German  axe 
avenged  the  wrongs  of  German  freedom  as  of  the 
German  gods,  and  at  the  moment  when  his  own 
Wessex  was  finally  shaking  off  the  Mercian  su¬ 
premacy,  Boniface  himself  fell  beneath  the  sword  of 
heathen  Frieslanders.  By  this  time,  however,  the 
work  of  the  missionaries  was  done.  From  the  banks 
of  the  Danube  to  the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  all  Ger¬ 
many,  save  the  stubborn  Saxon  land,  bowed,  if  but 
in  name,  to  the  faith  of  Christ. 

But  the  conversion  of  Germany  by  the  English 
missionaries  was  more  than  a  victory  for  the  Franks 
or  for  Christianity,  it  was  a  victory  for  Rome.  Eng¬ 
land  owed  its  faith  to  the  papacy,  and  it  was  to 
Rome  that  its  missionaries  looked  as  the  religious 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 


Kesul/s  of 
their  work. 


centre  of  Christendom.  If  they  drew  their  tem¬ 
poral  power  from  the  Frankish  sword,  they  sought 
spiritual  authority  from  the  hands  of  the  Roman 
bishop.  It  was  to  Rome  that  Willibrord  wandered 
for  ordination  as  bishop  of  the  Frieslanders;  it  was 
from  Rome  that  Boniface  sought  his  commission  to 
preach  in  Central  and  Southern  Germany.  In  visit 
after  visit  to  the  shrine  of  the  Apostles,  the  mission¬ 
aries  bound  the  German  Church  firmly  to  the  obe¬ 
dience  of  the  see  of  St.  Peter.  Their  action  was  a 
turning-point  in  the  history  of  the  papacy;  for  it 
was  to  the  immense  accession  of  power  which  their 
work  gave  it  that  the  spiritual  monarchy  of  Rome 
over  the  West  was  mainly  due.  But  it  was  a  turn- 


404 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 


Mercia  un¬ 
der  Offa. 


ing-point  also  in  the  history  of  the  Franks.  The 
submission  to  her  spiritual  sway  of  the  peoples  whom 
their  sword  had  won  first  brought  Rome  and  the 
Franks  together,  and  the  union  of  the  two  powers 
was  soon  drawn  closer  by  mutual  needs.  Rome 
saw  in  the  Franks  the  one  state  which  could  save 
her  from  the  ambition  of  the  Lombards  and  the 
pressure  of  the  Eastern  Emperor.  The  House  of 
Pippin,  on  the  other  hand,  saw  in  Rome  the  one 
source  of  religious  authority  which  could  give  a 
sacred  sanction  to  their  rule ;  and  in  the  years  that 
followed  Ine’s  withdrawal  from  the  throne  the  alli¬ 
ance  between  the  Franks  and  the  papacy  took  a 
formal  shape.  In  751  the  voice  of  Rome  pronounced 
that  the  honors  of  sovereignty  over  the  Frankish 
peoples  should  fall  to  the  actual  holder  of  power. 
The  Merwing  Hilderick  was  formally  deposed,  and 
Pippin  the  Short,  the  son  of  Charles  Martel,  was 
anointed  king  of  the  Franks  with  the  assent  of  Bon¬ 
iface  as  legate  of  the  Papal  See.  A  few  years  later, 
Pippin  repaid  his  debt  to  Rome  by  crossing  the 
Alps  and  by  delivering  the  papacy  from  the  pressure 
of  the  Lombards. 

In  bringing  about  this  union  between  Rome  and 
the  Franks,  the  English  missionaries  had  given  their 
after-shape  to  the  fortunes  of  modern  Europe.  The 
greatness  of  the  papacy  in  the  Middle  Ages  sprang 
from  the  recognition  of  its  authority  by  the  German 
Church  which  Boniface  and  Willibrord  had  built  up. 
In  saving  Rome  from  the  Lombards  Pippin  and  his 
son,  Charles  the  Great,  brought  about  a  revival  of 
the  Empire  in  the  West.  A  common  interest  begot 
at  a  single  moment  the  two  mighty  powers  which 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


405 


were  to  part  mediaeval  Christendom  between  them,  chap.  vui. 
and  from  whose  strife  were  to  spring  the  faiths  and  The 
the  nations  of  modern  Europe.  As  yet,  however,  Kingdoms, 
these  mighty  issues  were  unseen ;  and  England  _r 
knew  only  of  the  connection  between  Pippin  and  — 
the  English  preachers  in  the  intercourse  between 
Britain  and  the  Frankish  Court  which  this  connec¬ 
tion  brought  about.  Its  fortunes,  indeed,  at  this 
moment  offered  a  strange  contrast  to  those  of  the 
country  across  the  Channel.  While  the  Franks 
were  drawing  together  into  a  vast  and  concentrated 
power,  the  work  of  national  consolidation  among 
the  English  seemed  to  be  fatally  arrested.  The 
battle  of  Burford  had  finally  settled  the  division  of 
Britain  into  three  equal  powers.  Wessex  was  now 
as  firmly  planted  south  of  the  Thames  as  North¬ 
umbria  north  of  the  Humber;  and  the  Midland 
kingdom  could  henceforth  hope  for  no  extension 
beyond  either  of  these  rivers.  At  the  moment,  in¬ 
deed,  of  its  great  defeat  it  could  hardly  hope  to  re¬ 
tain  its  supremacy  even  over  this  territory.  Not 
only  had  Wessex  been  freed  by  the  battle  of  Bur- 
ford,  but  v'Ethelbald’s  own  throne  seems  to  have 
been  shaken;  for  in  757  the  Mercian  king  was  sur¬ 
prised  and  slain  in  a  night  attack  by  his  ealdormen,1 
and  a  year  of  confusion  passed  ere  his  kinsman  Offa 
could  avenge  him  on  his  murderers  and  succeed  to 
the  realm.  But  in  the  anarchy  Mercia  had  shrunk 
into  narrower  bounds.  Kent,  Essex,  and  East  Anglia 
had  thrown  off  her  yoke,  while  the  Welshmen  were 
rallying  to  fresh  inroads  over  her  western  border. 


!  Appendix  Baedae,  a.  757. 


406 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  viii.  None  of  the  Mercian  losses  had  been  so  grievous 
The  as  the  loss  of  Kent.  Through  Kent  ran  the  main 
Kingdoms,  road  of  communication  with  the  Continent ;  it  was 
690-829.  from  the  ports  of  Kent  that  English  merchants  set 
,  sail  across  the  Channel ;  and  the  Kentish  port-dues 

Jyars  with  #  1 

Kmt  and  formed  a  welcome  addition  to  the  Mercian  revenue. 
Kent,  too,  was  the  seat  of  an  archbishopric  whose 
obedience  was  owned  by  the  whole  English  Church 
south  of  the  Humber,  and  whose  political  weight 
was  making  itself  more  strongly  felt  every  day. 
Yet  years  had  to  pass  before  Offa  could  set  about 
the  recovery  of  this  province,  and  it  was  only  after 
a  struggle  of  three  years  that  a  victory  at  Otford,1 
in  77 5,  gave  it  back  to  the  Mercian  realm.  With 
Kent,  the  king  doubtless  again  recovered  Essex  and 
London,  within  whose  walls,  in  a  quarter  which  was 
doubtless  then  still  uninhabited,  he  built,  according 
to  the  tradition  of  the  city,  a  royal  vill,  whose  site 
is  now  marked  by  a  church  of  St.  Albans.  The  re¬ 
conquest  of  these  dependencies  in  the  southeast 
may  have  spurred  Offa  to  a  fresh  encounter  with 
the  West  Saxons;  and  four  years  later,  in  779,  he 
marched  upon  the  fragment  of  their  kingdom  which 
remained  to  the  north  of  the  Thames,  the  district 
of  the  Four  Towns,  and  of  the  modern  shires  of 
Oxford  and  Buckingham.  The  two  armies  met  in 
a  hard-fought  encounter  at  Bensington,2  and  the 
capture  of  the  town  as  well  as  the  eventual  posses¬ 
sion  of  the  disputed  district  shows  that  the  victory 
remained  with  Offa. 

The  success  was  a  great  one,  for,  as  the  locality 


E.  Chron.  a.  773  (5). 


3  E.  Chron.  a.  777  (9). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


407 


of  their  battles  shows,  it  was  this  district,  above  all, 
that  had  formed  the  subject  of  contention  between 
Mercia  and  the  West  Saxons ;  while  its  conquest 
gave  the  Midland  kingdom  a  strong  southern  fron¬ 
tier  in  the  course  of  the  Thames.  But  how  balanced 
was  the  struggle  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  it  brought 
Offa’s  efforts  to  build  up  again  the  supremacy  of 
his  predecessor  to  an  end,  and  that  for  the  nine 
years  that  followed  Mercia  made  no  further  efforts 
to  extend  her  power  over  her  English  neighbors. 
Like  her  rivals,  she  turned  upon  the  Welsh.1  Push¬ 
ing,  after  779,  over  the  Severn,  whose  upper  course 
had  served  till  now  as  the  border-line  between  Brit¬ 
on  and  Englishman,  Offa  drove  the  King  of  Powys 
from  his  capital,  Pengwyrn,  whose  older  name  its 
conquerors  replaced  by  the  significant  designation 
of  the  Town  in  the  Scrub,  Scrobsbyryg,  or  Shrews¬ 
bury,  and  carried  the  Mercian  border  to  the  Wye. 
The  border-line  he  drew  after  his  inroad  is  marked 
by  a  huge  earthwork  which  runs  from  the  mouth 
of  the  Wye  to  that  of  the  Dee,  and  which  still  bears 
the  name  of  Offa’s  Dyke.  A  settlement  of  Eng¬ 
lishmen  on  the  land  between  this  dyke  and  the  Sev¬ 
ern  served  as  a  military  frontier  for  the  Mercian 
realm.  Here,  as  in  the  later  conquests  of  the  North¬ 
umbrians  and  the  West  Saxons,  the  older  plan  of 
clearing  the  conquered  from  the  soil  was  abandoned. 
The  Welshmen  no  longer  withdrew  from  the  land 


1  Annales  Cambriae  (Rolls  ed.),  a.  778-784.  The  story  of  the  dyke 
is  not  found  before  Asser  (Asser,  ed.  Wise,  p.  10);  and  the  dyke  it¬ 
self  is  certainly  in  parts  a  natural  feature,  and  not  artificial.  But  the 
later  tradition  is  probably  right  in  taking  it  as  a  bound  of  their  con¬ 
quest. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

680-829. 

Conquests 
over  the 
Welsh. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 

Mercia 

and 

Wessex. 


408 

which  the  English  won ;  they  dwelt  undisturbed 
among  their  conquerors ;  and  it  was  probably  to 
regulate  the  relations  of  the  two  races  on  the  border 
he  had  won  that  Offa  drew  up  the  code  which  bore 
his  name.1 

In  the  central  as  in  the  northern  realm,  attacks 
on  the  Britons  marked  the  close  of  all  dreams  of 
supremacy  over  the  English  themselves.  Under 
Offa,  Mercia  sank  into  virtual  isolation.  As  we  shall 
see,  he  cherished  to  the  very  close  of  his  life  the 
hope  of  restoring  in  its  fulness  the  older  realm  of 
Central  Britain  by  the  recovery  of  East  Anglia;  but 
he  abstained  from  any  effort  to  extend  his  suprema¬ 
cy  over  the  two  rival  kingdoms.  The  anarchy  into 
which  Northumbria  sank  after  Eadberht’s  death 
never  tempted  him  to  cross  the  Humber;  nor  was 
he  shaken  from  his  inaction  by  as  tempting  an  op¬ 
portunity  which  presented  itself  across  the  Thames. 
Their  new  strength  had  not  drawn  the  West  Saxons 
from  their  attitude  of  isolation ;  though  they  were 
ready  to  defend  their  independence  against  Mercian 
attack,  their  aggressive  force,  like  that  of  Offa  or 
Northumbria,  was  turned  not  against  their  fellow- 
Englishmen,  but  against  the  Welsh.  It  must  have 
been  during  the  years  which  followed  on  the  battle 
of  Burford  that  they  made  themselves  masters  of 
that  part  of  what  remained  of  the  shrunken  king¬ 
dom  of  Dyvnaint  which  still  retains  its  old  name  in 
the  form  of  Devon,  and  pushed  their  frontier  from 
the  Exe  and  the  Tone,  where  Ine  had  left  it,  as  far 
westward  as  the  Tamar.  But  in  786  their  progress 

1  The  code  is  lost,  but  is  mentioned  by  yElfred  in  his  Laws. 
Thorpe,  Ancient  Laws  and  Institutes,  vol.  i.  p.  59. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


409 


was  stayed  by  a  fresh  outbreak  of  anarchy.  Their  chap.  vm. 
king  Cynewulf  was  slain  by  the  brother  of  a  king  The 
whom  he  had  himself  driven  from  the  throne,1  and  Kingdoms, 
the  succession  of  his  son  Beorhtric  was  disputed  by  69~2g 
Ecgberht,  a  descendant,  like  Ine,  of  Ceawlin,  and  thus  — 
a  representative  of  the  rival  line  of  the  House  of 
Cerdic.  The  strife  ended  in  Ecgberht’s  defeat  and 
in  his  flight  to  Offa’s  court;  but  the  Mercian  king 
used  his  presence  not  so  much  to  further  schemes 
of  aggrandizement  as  to  bring  about  a  peaceful  con¬ 
nection  with  his  turbulent  neighbors,  and  three  years 
later  Beorhtric  purchased  Ecgberht’s  expulsion  from 
Mercia  by  taking  Offa’s  daughter,  Eadburh,  to  wife.2 

At  this  moment,  indeed,  Offa  was  bent  on  a  proi-  Archbisk- 

.  1  J  opnc  of 

ect  which  pointed  to  the  purpose  of  making  the  Lichfield. 
threefold  division  of  Britain  a  permanent  basis  of  its 
political  order.  This  was  the  erection  of  a  third 
archbishopric.  Theodore’s  design  of  gathering  into 
one  the  whole  English  Church  round  the  centre  of 
Canterbury  had  already  in  part  broken  down ;  for 
when  Northumbria  abandoned  the  hope  of  a  nation¬ 
al  supremacy  and  withdrew  into  provincial  isolation, 
she  raised  the  see  of  York  into  a  new  archbishop¬ 
ric.  Offa  now  followed  its  example.  The  mission 
of  two  Papal  legates  to  Britain  in  786s  was  the  result 
of  urgent  letters  from  the  king;  and  in  a  synod  held 
under  their  presidency  in  the  following  year,  Lich¬ 
field  was  raised  into  an  archbishopric,  with  the 
Bishops  of  Mercia  and  East  Anglia  for  its  suf¬ 
fragans.4  After-tradition  was  probably  right  in  look- 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  784  (6).  3  E.  Chron,  a.  787  (9). 

3  Sim.  Dunelm.  de  Gest.  Reg.  a.  786. 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  785  (really  787).  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  etc. 


4io 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  yin,  ing  on  this  measure  as  intended  mainly  to  lessen  the 
The  power  of  Canterbury,  where  the  primates  were  be- 
Kingdoms,  coming  a  centre  of  Kentish  resistance  to  the  Mer- 
690-829.  C^an  overlordship.  Left  with  only  four  suffragans — 
—  the  Bishops  of  Rochester  and  London,  of  Selsey  and 
Winchester1 — the  see  of  Augustine  must  have  sunk 
into  the  weakest  and  least  important  of  the  three 
primacies  between  which  Britain  was  now  divided. 
But,  both  ecclesiastically  and  politically,  Offa’s  act 
pointed  to  far  wider  issues  than  this.  It  brought 
England  into  new  and  more  direct  relations  with 
Rome.  Roman  legates  were  called  to  remould  the 
fabric  of  the  English  Church,  and  the  Papal  sanction 
was  met  by  a  pledge  on  Offa’s  part  that  he  and  his 
successors  would  pay  year  by  year  a  sum  both  for 
alms  and  lights  to  the  see  of  St.  Peter.  Its  political 
results  promised  to  be  even  weightier.  Had  this 
threefold  division  remained  stamped  on  the  English 
Church,  it  would  hardly  have  failed  to  strengthen 
the  threefold  division  which  seemed  to  be  stamping 
itself  on  the  English  nation.  The  effect  of  its  sepa¬ 
rate  primacy  in  strengthening  the  isolation  of  the 
north  was  seen  at  a  later  day  in  the  difficulty  with 
which  this  part  of  England  was  brought  into  polit¬ 
ical  union  with  the  rest,  whether  by  the  sword  of 
Eadred  or  of  William  the  Norman.  Had  the  arch¬ 
bishopric  of  Lichfield  proved  a  more  lasting  one,  it 
could  hardly  have  been  less  effective  in  strengthen¬ 
ing  the  isolation  of  Mid-Britain,  and  in  throwing  a 
fresh  hindrance  in  the  way  of  any  fusion  of  English¬ 
men  into  a  single  people. 

vol.  iii.  p.  443  et  seq.  for  documents  of  this  mission  and  valuable 
notes.  1  Malmesbury,  Gest.  Reg.  (Hardy),  i.  119. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND.  4II 

All  Offa,  in  fact,  aimed  at  was  the  union  of  Mid- 
Britain,  of  the  land  between  the  Humber  and  the 
Thames,  with  its  Kentish  outlet,  under  the  Mercian 
crown ;  and  even  in  this  aim  he  was  still  foiled  by  the 
resistance  of  East  Anglia.  Not  only  was  he  ham¬ 
pered  in  any  larger  projects  of  aggrandizement  by 
the  dread  of  the  West  Saxons,  but  he  was  forced  to 
watch  jealously  a  power  which  had  risen  to  a  dan¬ 
gerous  greatness  over-sea.  The  results  of  the  ac¬ 
tion  of  Boniface  and  his  fellow  -  missionaries  had 
been  rapidly  developing  themselves  through  the 
reign  of  Offa,  and  the  power  of  the  Franks  had  now 
risen  to  a  height  which  made  them  supreme  in  the 
Western  world.  After  a  short  interval  of  divided 
sovereignty  on  the  death  of  Pippin,  his  son  Charles, 
so  well-known  in  after- days  as  Charles  the  Great, 
won  full  possession  of  the  Frankish  throne.  The 
policy  of  Charles  towards  the  English  kingdoms  re¬ 
mained  as  friendly  as  that  of  his  father.  The  polit¬ 
ical  incidents  of  the  new  reign,  indeed,  made  English 
friendship  more  needful  than  ever  to  the  Franks, 
for  the  two  peoples  whose  hostility  threatened  them 
with  immediate  war  were  both  linked,  in  different 
ways,  to  Englishmen.  In  their  German  home  the 
Lombards  had  been  close  neighbors  of  the  con- 
querors  of  Britain,  and  the  similarity  of  their  dress, 
the  identity  of  many  of  the  Lombard  and  English 
names,  as  well  as  chance  marriages  of  Lombard 
kings  with  Englishwomen,  point  to  closer  bonds  be¬ 
tween  the  peoples  than  those  of  mere  neighborhood. 
Nor  had  Englishmen  forgotten  that  the  Saxons  of 
the  Continent,  with  whom  Charles  was  now  about 
to  open  the  most  terrible  contest  of  his  reign,  were 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 

Charles  the 
Great. 


412 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 


Charles 
and  Offa. 


the  stock  from  which  they  sprang,  though  their  zeal 
for  the  Christianization  of  their  kindred  was  strong 
enough  to  overpower  the  more  natural  sympathy 
with  them  in  their  struggle  for  freedom  against  the 
sword  of  the  Frank.  But  this  common  religious  in¬ 
terest  on  the  Saxon  Shore  was  not  the  only  bond 
which  drew  Frank  and  Englishman  together.  A 
common  political  interest  revealed  itself  in  their  re¬ 
lations  with  the  Celtic  peoples  on  either  side  the 
Channel.  Among  the  most  harassing  troubles  of 
the  Franks  was  the  restless  craving  of  the  Bret¬ 
ons  for  freedom ;  and  the  struggle  of  the  Bretons 
against  the  Franks  found  echoes  in  the  struggle 
of  their  Welsh  brethren  in  Britain  against  the 
English  kingdoms.  Offa  was  bridling  the  inroads 
of  the  Central  Welshmen,  Wessex  was  slowly  press¬ 
ing  westward  on  those  of  Dyvnaint,  at  the  mo¬ 
ment  when  the  bravest  of  the  Frank  warriors  found 
endless  work  in  stamping  out  again  and  again  the 
unquenchable  fire  of  revolt  among  the  Celts  of 
Brittany. 

The  scanty  details  which  we  possess  of  inter¬ 
course  between  Charles  and  the  English  kingdoms 
point  to  a  policy  which  would  naturally  be  dictated 
by  these  common  interests.  His  friendship  with 
the  Northumbrian  scholar  Alcuin,  who  joined  him 
in  782,  naturally  drew  Charles  into  close  relations 
with  Northern  Britain;  but  his  missions  and  re¬ 
monstrances  in  this  quarter  seem  at  first  to  have 
aimed  simply  at  checking  the  anarchy  of  Northum¬ 
bria.  With  Offa — if  we  judge  from  the  fragments 
of  their  correspondence  which  remain,  rather  than 
from  later  traditions — the  relations  of  Charles  were 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


413 


equally  friendly.1  He  may  have  striven  to  save  chap,  vih, 
Kent  from  his  grasp,  and  threatening  letters  from  The 
the  Frankish  Court  may  have  met  the  Mercian  on  Kingdoms, 
his  march  into  the  province.2 3  But  if  so,  Offa’s  dis-  69^29 
regard  of  them  was  followed  by  no  act  of  more  di-  — 
rect  intervention.  At  the  moment,  indeed,  of  the  re- 
conquest  of  Kent,  the  hands  of  Charles  were  tied  by 
dangers  nearer  home.  It  was  no  time  to  provide  a 
quarrel  in  his  rear  when  he  was  marching  to  his  final 
struggle  with  the  Lombards,  and  threatened  with 
the  opening  of  a  struggle  far  sterner  and  more  last¬ 
ing  with  the  Saxons  of  the  Elbe.  In  the  years  which 
followed,  indeed,  the  power  of  the  Frankish  king 
reached  a  height  which  made  any  hostility  from 
England  of  less  moment  to  him.  While  Offa  was 
mastering  Kent,  Charles  put  an  end  to  the  mon¬ 
archy  of  the  Lombards,  and  added  the  bulk  of  Italy 
to  the  Frankish  realm.  While  the  Mercian  king 
drove  the  Welsh  from  the  Severn,  Charles  was  driv¬ 
ing  the  Saxons  in  thousands  to  baptism  in  the 
Lippe,  and  carrying  his  border  over  the  Pyrenees  to 
the  Elbe.  At  the  moment  when  Ecgberht  made  his 
way  to  the  Frankish  Court,  its  king  had  become 
master  of  a  realm  which  stretched  from  Brittany  to 
the  mountains  of  Bohemia,  and  from  Zaragoza  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Elbe.  But,  immense  as  was  his 
power,  Charles  was  still  careful  to  keep  up  good  re- 


1  In  a  letter  written  in  796,  or  at  the  close  of  Offa’s  life,  Charles 

speaks  of  their  “antiqui  inter  nos  pacti,”  as  well  as  of  the  constant 
correspondence  between  them,  “epistolis,  quae  diversis  siquidem 
temporibus  per  missorum  vestrorum  manus  delatae  sunt  ”  (Stubbs 
and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  496). 

3  This  is  only  mentioned  by  the  supposititious  Vita  Offae. 


414 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 

Relations 
of  Charles 
with  Eng¬ 
land. 


lations  with  the  English  kingdom,  and  the  care  with 
which  at  this  time  he  informed  Offa  of  the  progress 
of  Christianity  among  the  old  Saxons  proves  that 
he  looked  upon  him  as  a  useful  ally. 

But  friendly  as  was  the  general  tenor  of  the  king’s 
policy,  Offa  shrank  cautiously  from  any  connection 
which  might  imply  a  recognition  of  Frankish  su¬ 
premacy.  When  Charles,  in  788,  demanded  the 
hand  of  one  of  the  Mercian  king’s  daughters  for  his 
son  Charles,  Offa  demanded  in  return  the  hand  of  a 
daughter  of  Charles  for  his  son  Ecgberht ;  and  so 
stung  was  Charles  by  this  claim  of  equality  that  he 
closed  for  a  while  his  ports  against  English  traffic 
till  the  mediation  of  Alcuin  reconciled  the  two  sov¬ 
ereigns.* 1  But  Offa  had  good  grounds  for  his  cau¬ 
tion.  The  costly  gifts  which  Charles  despatched 
from  time  to  time  to  the  monasteries  of  England  as 
of  Ireland  showed  his  will  to  obtain  an  influence 
in  both  countries :  through  Alcuin  he  maintained 
relations  with  Northumbria;  through  Archbishop 
/Ethelheard  he  maintained  relations  not  only  with 
Kent,  but  with  the  whole  English  Church.  Above 
all,  he  harbored  at  his  court  exiles  from  every  Eng¬ 
lish  realm.  Exiled  kings  of  Northumbria  made 
their  way  to  Aachen  or  Nimeguen;  East-Anglian 
thegns  sought  a  refuge  there  after  the  conquest  of 
their  realm;2  and  at  the  close  of  Offa’s  life,  in  796, 
Charles  was  still  sheltering  a  priest,  Odberht,  who 
had  left  England  on  pretext  of  pilgrimage ;  but,  as 


1  See  an  examination  of  this  story  in  Lappenberg,  Anglo-Saxons, 

i.  293. 

s  Charles  to  Archbishop  Aithelheard  (Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Coun¬ 
cils,  vol.  iii.  p.  487,  with  note). 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


415 


the  Mercian  king  believed,  to  make  false  charges 
against  him  as  well  as  other  exiles  “  who  through 
fear  of  death  have  fled  to  our  protection.”1  There, 
too,  Ecgberht,  the  claimant  of  the  West -Saxon 
throne,  had  found  a  refuge  since  Offa’s  league  with 
Beorhtric  in  787. 

The  years  which  Ecgberht  spent  at  the  court  of 
Charles  were  years  of  the  highest  moment  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  Master  of  the  whole  German 
people  across  the  Channel,  the  Frankish  king  threw 
the  weight  of  his  new  power  on  the  Sclavonic  and 
Tartar  nations  which  were  pressing  on  its  rear;  and 
that  eastward  movement  of  the  Teutonic  race,  which 
was  to  found  the  two  great  German  powers  of  the 
present  day  in  the  marches  of  Brandenburg  and 
Austria,  began  in  the  campaigns  of  Charles  against 
the  Avars  and  the  Wends.  But  Charles  was  now 
to  be  more  than  a  German  king.  His  greatness 
had  reached  a  height  which  revived  in  men’s  minds 
the  memory  of  Rome ;  his  repulse  of  the  heathen 
world,  which  was  pressing  on  from  the  east,  marked 
him  out  for  the  head  and  champion  of  Christendom; 
and  on  Christmas-day,  800,  the  shouts  of  the  people 
and  priesthood  of  Rome  hailed  him  as  Roman  Em¬ 
peror.  Ecgberht  had  probably  marched  in  the  train 
of  the  Frankish  king  to  the  Danube  and  the  Ti¬ 
ber  ;  he  may  have  witnessed  the  great  event  which 
changed  the  face  of  the  world ;  and  it  was  in  the 
midst  of  the  peace  which  followed  it,  while  the  new 
emperor  was  yet  nursing  hopes  of  a  recognition  in 
the  East  as  in  the  West  which  would  have  united 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

6E0  829. 


Ecgberht 
at  the 
Frankish 
Court. 


1  Charles  to  Offa  (Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  p.  497). 


CHAP.  VIII. 

The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 

690-829. 

Britain 
and  the 
Empire. 


^6  THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 

the  whole  world  again  under  a  Roman  rule,  that  the 
death  of  Beorhtric  opened  a  way  for  the  exile’s  re¬ 
turn  to  Wessex. 

The  years  that  had  passed  since  his  flight  had 
made  little  change  in  the  state  of  Britain.  In  794, 
Offa  had  at  last  been  enabled  to  complete  his  realm 
in  Mid- Britain  by  the  murder  of  the  East-Anglian 
king,  /Ethelberht,  and  the  seizure  of  his  land;’  but 
from  that  moment  to  his  death,  in  796,  he  was  occu¬ 
pied  in  the  founding  of  what  was  destined  to  be  one 
of  the  greatest  of  English  abbeys  on  a  spot  hallowed 
by  the  death  of  St.  Alban,  near  the  ruins  of  the  Ro¬ 
man  Verulamium,  and  in  dealing  with  a  fresh  Kent¬ 
ish  revolt.  The  revolt  was  only  quelled  by  his  suc¬ 
cessor,  Cenwulf.1 2  Cenwulf  secured  the  co-operation 
of  the  Kentish  primate  in  this  work  by  a  pledge 
to  suppress  the  Mercian  archbishopric ;  and  in  803 
Lichfield  sank  again  into  a  suffragan  see  to  the 
successors  of  Augustine.3  But  there  was  still  no 
attempt  to  carry  further  the  supremacy  of  Mercia. 
The  history,  indeed,  of  the  Midland  kingdom  is  at 
this  point  little  more  than  a  blank.  All  dreams  of 
ambition  at  home  must,  in  fact,  have  been  hushed  in 
the  sense  of  a  common  danger,  as  men  followed  step 
by  step  the  progress  of  the  new  ruler  of  Western 
Christendom.  Charles  had  remained  to  the  last  on 
terms  of  peace  and  friendship  with  Offa;4  but  the 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  792  (4).  2  In  798.  E.  Chron.  a.  796. 

3  For  letters  of  Cenwulf  and  Leo  III.  on  this  matter  see  Stubbs 

and  Haddan,  Councils,  pp.  521,  523.  For  final  act  of  the  council 
which  did  away  with  the  archbishopric,  ibid.  p.  542. 

4  Letter  of  Charles  and  Alcuin  to  Offa  in  796.  Stubbs  and  Had¬ 
dan,  Councils,  vol.  fii.  pp.  496,  498. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


41S 

chap. vm.  death  of  the  Mercian  king,  the  war  of  Mercia  with 
The  Kent,  and  the  murder  of  King  /Ethelred  by  the 

singe oms.  Northumbrian  thegns,  afforded,  in  796,  an  opening 
6£ 0-629.  f°r  intervention,  which  seems  only  to  have  been 
averted  by  the  persuasion  of  Alcuin.1 * 3 *  The  danger, 
though  staved  off  for  the  time,  must  have  deepened 
to  English  minds  when,  four  years  later,  Charles 
mounted  the  Imperial  throne.  His  coronation  as 
Emperor  had  a  meaning  for  the  English  states  which 
we  are  apt  to  forget.  Britain  had  been  lost  to  the 
Empire  in  the  hour  when  the  rest  of  the  Western 
provinces  were  lost ;  and  to  men  of  that  day  it  would 
seem  natural  enough  that  she  should  return  to  the 
Empire  now  that  Rome  had  risen  again  to  more 
than  its  old  greatness  in  the  West.  Such  a  return, 
we  can  hardly  doubt,  was  in  the  mind  of  Charles ; 
and  the  revolutions  which  were  distracting  the  Eng¬ 
lish  kingdoms  told  steadily  towards  it.  When,  in 
802/  Ecsberht  left  the  court  of  Charles  and  mount- 
ed  the  West -Saxon  throne,  Cenwulf  stood  silently 
by ;  and  the  peace  which  he  maintained  with  the 
new  ruler  of  Wessex  throughout  his  reign  suggests 
that  this  restoration  had  been  brought  about  by  dip¬ 
lomatic  arrangement  between  the  Emperor  and  the 
Mercian  king.8  Six  years  later  a  new  step  forward 


1  On  the  news  of  the  murder  “  Carolus  ...  in  tantum  iratus  est 
contra  gentem  illam,  ut  ait,  perfidam  et  perversam.  et  homicidam 
dominorum  suorum.  pejorem  earn  paganis  existimat :  ut.  nisi  ego 
intercessor  essem  pro  ea,  quicquid  eis  boni  abstrahere  potuisset  et 
mali  machinari,  jam  fecisset"  (Alcuin  to  Offa,  between  April  and 
July.  -96).  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  voL  iii.  p.  498. 

5  E.  Chron.  a.  800. 

3  It  is  possible  that  Cenwulf  may  have  been  hampered  by  a 

strife  with  Eardwulf  of  Northumbria  about  harboring  of  exiles 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


419 


in  the  assertion  of  this  supremacy  was  made  by  the  CHAP- VIIt- 
new  Empire.  In  808,*  1  the  Northumbrian  king,  Eard-  The 
wulf,  who  had  two  years  before  been  driven  from  Kingdoms, 
his  throne  by  a  revolt  of  his  subjects,  appealed  both  69^29 
to  Pope  and  Emperor,  and  was  brought  back  and  re-  — 
stored  to  his  throne  by  their  envoys/ 

But  though  we  are  thus  told  of  the  assertion  of  conquest 

O  OJ 

the  Imperial  supremacy  in  Northern  Britain,  of  the  Cornwall. 
relations  between  Charles  and  the  exile  who  had 
quitted  his  protection  to  become  king  of  the  West 
Saxons  we  know  nothing.  The  stay  of  Ecgberht 
at  the  Frankish  Court  had  left,  as  his  after -policy 
shows,  a  marked  impression  on  him ;  and  we  may  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  friendship  which  we  find  existing  in 
later  days  between  the  West-Saxon  House  and  that 
of  Charles  the  Great  had  already  begun.  The  first 
political  enterprise  of  the  new  king,  at  any  rate,  was 
one  which  Charles  himself  might  have  suggested. 

The  Bretons  of  Brittany  were  among  the  standing 
troubles  of  the  Frankish  realm,  as  the  Britons  of 
West  Wales  were  the  standing  trouble  of  the  West- 
Saxon.  A  blow  at  the  one  was,  in  great  measure, 
a  blow  at  the  other ;  and  Lewis  the  Gentle,  who  in 
814  succeeded  his  father.  Charles,  in  the  Imperial 

which  Simeon  of  Durham  places  in  Soi.  Sim.  Durh.,  Gest.  Reg.  a. 

Soi. 

1  Sim.  Durh.,  Hist.  Dun.  Eccl.  ii.  5 :  E.  Chron.  (Peterborough),  a. 

806. 

1  Eginhard.  Annal.  a.  808  :  “  Rex  Nordhanhambrorum  de  Britan¬ 
nia  insula,  nomine  Eardulf,  regno  et  patria  pulsus,  ad  Imperatorem 
dum  adhuc  Noviomagi  moraretur  venit,  et  patefacto  adventus  sui 
negotio,  Romam  proficiscitur,  Romaque  rediens  per  legatos  Romani 
Pontiticis  et  domini  Imperatoris  in  regnum  suum  reducitur. "  See 
Letters  of  Leo  III.  in  Stubbs  and  Haddan,  Councils,  vol.  iii.  pp. 

562-565. 


420 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  yin,  throne,  must  have  looked  on  with  approval  as  strife 
^The  between  the  sprinkling  of  Englishmen  who  had  re- 
Kingdoms.  cently  settled  in  Devon  and  the  Welsh  (who  still 
690-829.  held  their  ground  across  the  Tamar)  grew  into  a  war 
which  in  815  forced  Ecgberht  to  march  into  the 
heart  of  Cornwall.1  After  eight  years  of  fighting, 
his  attack  proved  successful ;  the  last  fragment  of 
British  dominion  in  the  west  came  to  an  end,  and 
the  whole  of  Dyvnaint  owned  the  supremacy  of  the 
West-Saxon  king.  The  conquest  of  Cornwall  marks 
a  fresh  stage  in  the  long  warfare  between  Britons 
and  Englishmen.  As  a  nation  Britain  had  passed 
away  with  the  victories  of  Deorham  and  Chester: 
what  was  left  were  four  British  peoples — the  Britons 
of  Cornwall,  of  Central  Wales,  of  Cumbria,  and  of 
Strathclyde.  In  the  two  hundred  years  which  had 
elapsed  since  vEthelfrith’s  victory,  three  of  these  had 
bowed  to  the  English  sway.  Ecgfrith  had  put  an 
end  to  the  independence  of  Cumbria.  Under  Ead- 
berht,  Northumbria  had  brought  her  strife  with 
Strathclyde  to  a  close  by  the  subjection  of  these 
Northern  Britons  and  the  capture  of  Alcluyd.  In 
Central  Wales,  Offa’s  conquest  of  the  tract  between 
the  Severn  and  the  Dyke  had  been  followed  by  a 
payment  of  tribute  on  the  part  of  the  chieftains  to 
the  westward  of  it,  which  was  a  practical  acknowl¬ 
edgment  of  their  submission  to  the  Mercian  crown. 
Ecgberht’s  campaign  brought  the  long  struggle  to 
an  end  by  the  reduction  of  the  one  British  state 
which  still  remained  unconquered ;  and  the  Britons 
of  the  southwestern  peninsula,  after  the  successive 


E.  Chron.  a.  813,  823. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


42  1 


losses  of  Somerset  and  Devon,  saw  the  West  Saxons  chap,  vm, 
masters  of  their  last  strongholds  from  the  Tamar  to  the 
the  Land’s  End.  Kingdoms. 

But  the  winning  of  West  Wales  was  the  smallest  690^29 


result  of  Ecgberht’s  victories.  The  dread  of  Welsh  „  — 

0  .  .  Conquest 

hostility  in  their  rear  had  formed  till  now  the  main  of  Mercia . 
check  on  any  advance  of  the  West  Saxons  against 


•Stanford"*  tJtoyraphvcal  Eilabf 


their  English  neighbors;  and  not  only  was  this  check 
removed  by  the  reduction  of  Cornwall,  but  it  was 
removed  at  a  moment  when  its  internal  condition 
allowed  Wessex  to  take  advantage  of  the  liberty  of 
action  which  it  had  gained,  and  when  the  civil  dis¬ 
cord  which  had  so  long  torn  the  kingdom  in  pieces 
was  hushed  beneath  the  firm  rule  of  Ecgberht.  While 


422 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chap,  yin.  Wessex,  too,  regained  the  strength  it  had  lost  through 
The  the  past  two  centuries,  its  rival  in  Central  Britain 
Kingdoms,  sank  helplessly  into  the  anarchy  from  which  the 
690-829  southern  kingdom  had  emerged.  On  Cenwulf’s 
—  death,1  in  821,  Mercia  was  torn  with  civil  war;  and 
the  weakness  this  left  behind  it  was  seen  when  his 
successor  took  up  the  long-interrupted  strife  with 
the  West  Saxons.  The  war  in  Dyvnaint  was  hardly 
over  when  Beornwulf,  in  825,  marched  into  Wilt¬ 
shire.  But  the  decisive  repulse  of  his  army  at  El- 
landun2  was  the  signal  for  a  break-up  of  the  Mercian 
realm.  All  England  south  of  the  Thames  submit¬ 
ted  to  the  West-Saxon  king;3  the  East  Saxons  over 
the  river  owned  the  rule  of  Wessex;  and  in  Kent 
Ecgberht  was  able  to  set  aside  a  native  king  who 
had  seized  its  throne  in  the  hour  of  Mercia’s  defeat. 
Others  were  doing  his  work  in  Mid- Britain  itself. 
The  overthrow  of  Ellandun  was  followed  by  a  des¬ 
perate  rising  against  Beornwulf’s  sway  along  the 
eastern  coast.  Mercia,  spent  by  its  earlier  over¬ 
throw,  was  utterly  exhausted  by  two  victories  of  the 
East  Anglians :  two  of  its  kings  in  succession  fell 
fighting  on  East-Anglian  soil;4  and  a  third,  Wiglaf, 
had  hardly  mounted  the  throne  when  Ecgberht  saw 
that  the  hour  had  come  for  a  decisive  onset.  In 
828,  the  West-Saxon  army  crossed  the  Thames; 
Wiglaf  fled  helplessly  before  it;  and  the  realm  of 
Penda  and  of  Offa  bowed  without  a  struggle  to  its 
conqueror. 

But  Ecgberht  had  wider  dreams  of  conquest  than 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  819. 
1  E.  Chron.  a.  823. 


5  E.  Chron.  a.  823. 

4  E.  Chron.  a.  823,  825. 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


423 


those  of  supremacy  over  Mercia  alone;  and,  setting  chap.  vm. 
an  under-kinsr  on  its  throne,  he  marched  in  the  fol-  The 
lowing  year  to  the  attack  of  Northumbria.  In  the  Kingdoms, 
silence  of  her  annals,  we  know  not  why  the  realm  69“2g 
which  seventy  years  before  had  beaten  back  /Ethel-  — 

'  ’  .  ...  Submission 

bald,  and  which  had  since  carried  its  conquests  to  of  North- 
the  Clyde,  now  yielded  without  a  blow  to  Ecgberht’s  um  r,a’ 
summons.  The  weariness  of  half  a  century  of  an¬ 
archy  had,  no  doubt,  done  much  to  break  the  spirit 
of  northern  independence,  while  terror  of  the  pirates 
who  were  harrying  the  Northumbrian  coast  may 
have  strengthened  the  dim  longing  for  internal  uni¬ 
ty  which  was  growing  up  under  the  influence  of  the 
Church.  But,  whatever  may  have  been  the  causes 
of  their  action,  the  Northumbrian  theems  met  Ec«;- 
berht  on  their  border,  at  Dore,  in  Derbyshire,  and 
owned  him  as  their  overlord.1  There  is  something 
startling  in  so  quiet  and  uneventful  a  close  to  the 
struggles  of  two  hundred  years  ;  for  with  the  sub¬ 
mission  of  Northumbria  the  work  that  Oswiu  and 
/Ethelbald  had  failed  to  do  was  done.  In  a  revolu¬ 
tion  which  seemed  sudden,  but  which  was  in  reality 
the  inevitable  close  of  the  growth  of  natural  con¬ 
sciousness  through  these  centuries  of  English  his¬ 
tory,  the  old  severance  of  people  from  people  had  at 
last  been  broken  down  ;  and  the  whole  English  race 
in  Britain  was  for  the  first  time  knit  together  under 
a  single  ruler.  Though  the  legend  which  made 
Ecgberht  take  the  title  of  King  of  England  is  an 
invention  of  later  times,  it  expressed  an  historic 
truth.  Long  and  bitter  as  the  struggle  for  separate 


1  E.  Chron.  a.  S27. 


424 


THE  MAKING  OF  ENGLAND. 


chakviii.  existence  was  still  to  be  in  Mid  -  Britain  and  the 
The  North,  it  was  a  struggle  that  never  wholly  undid  the 
Kingdoms. work  which  his  sword  had  done;  and  from  the  mo- 
690-829  ment  when  the  Northumbrian  thegns  bowed  to  their 
—  West-Saxon  overlord,  England  was  made  in  fact,  if 
not  as  yet  in  name. 


INDEX. 


A 

Abingdon,  343,  and  note. 

Aedhan,  son  of  Gafran,  born  a.d. 
533,  225  ;  consecration  of,  as  king 
of  Dalriada,  A.D.  574,  by  Colomba, 
225  ;  drives  back  the  Bernicians, 
225. 

ALdilwalch,  366. 

zElfred,  his  birthplace,  92  ;  and  Eald- 
helm,  326. 

-'Ella,  the  Engle  of  Deira  under,  208  ; 
death,  a.d.  588,  21 1. 

Aille,  son  of  Hengest,  35. 

Aithelbald,  succeeds  Ceolred,  a.d. 
718,  384;  defeated  by  the  West 
Saxons,  a.d.  754,  384  ;  attacks  Ead- 
berht,  392 ;  death,  a.d.  757,  405. 

ALthelberht,  birth,  A.D.  552,  107,  note  ; 
Kent  under,  107  ;  defeat  of,  at  Wib- 
ba’s  dun,  or  Wimbledon,  a.d.  568, 
1 13  ;  marriage  with  Bertha,  daugh¬ 
ter  of  Charibert,  204  ;  Kent  under, 
206 ;  as  overlord  of  the  East  Sax¬ 
ons,  207  ;  extent  of  his  supremacy, 
207;  and  Augustine,  213;  conver¬ 
sion  to  Christianity,  215  ;  advance 
of  Christianity  under,  227  ;  builds 
the  church  of  St.  Paul,  228  ;  decline 
of  power,  and  death,  a.d.  616,  238. 

TEthelburh,  daughter  of  Eadbald,  mar¬ 
ried  to  Eadwine,  251  ;  at  the  death 
of  Eadwine  takes  refuge  in  Kent, 
264,  344. 

ALthelfrith,  effect  of  his  victories  on 
the  Britons,  192;  king  of  Northum¬ 
bria,  a.d.  593,  212  ;  victory  over  the 
Scots  at  Daegsastan,  225  ;  difficulties 
with  the  descendants  of  yElla,  232  ; 
bribes  Raedwald  for  the  death  of 
Eadwine,  241  ;  defeat  of,  by  Raed- 
wald,  at  the  river  Idle,  244. 

zEthelhere,  292  ;  death  at  the  battle 
of  the  Winwaed,  294. 

ALthelred,  succeeds  Wulfhere,  a.d. 
675,  334 ;  retires  to  a  monastery, 
376.  ' ' 


Aithelric,  conquers  Deira,  211  ;  union 
of  Deira  and  Bernicia  as  Northum¬ 
bria  under,  2 1 1  ;  death,  a.  D.  593,  2 1 2. 

ALthelthryth,  Abbess,  her  tomb  at  Ely 
built  from  the  ruins  of  Camboritum, 
79,  341,  and  note. 

Aithelwalch,  baptized,  and  receives 
the  settlements  of  the  Isle  of  Wight 
and  Meonwara  at  the  hands  of 
Wulfhere,  319. 

Agatho,  chaplain  to  Bishop  Agilberct, 

313- 

Agilberct,  Bishop,  312. 

Agricola,  his  intended  conquest  of 
Ireland,  269. 

Aidan,  Bishop,  death  of,  289. 

Alchfrid,  son  of  Oswiu,  31 1. 

Alcuin,  a  pupil  of  Ecgberht,  396  ;  at 
the  Frankish  Court,  396. 

Aldborough,  Roman  traces  at,  62. 

Aldfrith,  king  of  Northumbria,  385  ; 
rise  of  literature  under,  386. 

Ammianus  Marcellinus,  15,  note. 

Ancaster,  Roman  remains  at,  77. 

Anderida  (Pevensey),  a  fortress,  21  ; 
siege  of,  41  ;  its  fall,  42. 

Andredsweald,  the,  retreat  of  the  Brit¬ 
ons  to,  40. 

Anna,  brother  of  Sigeberht,  under-king 
of  East  Anglia,  265  ;  death,  a.d.  654, 
292. 

Antonines,  the,  government  under,  2, 
and  note  ;  4,  note. 

Arden,  the  forest  of,  73,  337,  338,  note. 

Augustine,  lands  in  Britain,  a.d.  597, 
212;  meets  Aithelberht,  213;  con¬ 
version  of  yEthelberht  and  men  of 
Kent,  215,  216;  meets  the  Welsh 
clergy,  217,  218;  failure  of  the  con¬ 
ference  with  the  Welsh,  221. 

Aurelius  Ambrosianus,  victory  of, 
over  Vortigern,  36 ;  marches  on 
the  Jutes,  36. 

Aylesford,  battle  of,  and  death  of 
Ilorsa  at,  34,  35;  the  victory  a 
cause  of  political  change,  35. 


426 


INDEX. 


B 

Baeda,  absence  of  British  and  Roman 
names  in  his  history,  135  ;  birth  and 
early  life,  386  ;  his  work,  388 ;  the 
story  of  his  death,  390.  Notes  ami 
references  to,  throughout. 
Bamborough,  Ida’s  headquarters,  69. 
Bampton,  battle  of,  231. 

Barbury  Hill,  battle  of,  91. 

Barking,  Hithelburh  and  the  nuns  of, 
344- 

Bath,  early  grandeur  of,  123  ;  Roman 
remains,  123,  note;  378. 

Battles — 

Avlesford,  a.d.  455,  34,  35. 

Bampton,  a.d.  614,  231. 

Barbury  Hill,  a.d.  556,  91. 

Bedford,  A.D.  571,  1 19. 

Bensington,  a.d.  779,  406. 

Bradford,  at,  a.d.  652,  329. 

Burford,  a.d.  754,  384. 

Charford,  a.d.  579,  85. 

Chester,  a.d.  613,  234,  235. 
Cirencester,  a.d.  628,  259. 

Crayford,  a.d.  457,  36. 

Daegsastan,  a.d.  603,  225. 

Deorham,  a.d.  577,  124. 

Ellandun,  a.d.  825,  422. 

Faddilev,  a.d.  584,  199,  200. 
Hatfield,  a.d.  633,  263. 

Heaven-field,  a.d.  635,  26S. 

Idle,  the,  a.d.  617,  243,  244. 
Maserfield,  a.d.  642,  2S6. 
Mearcredsburn,  a.d.  485,  41,  note. 
Mount  Badon,  at,  a.d.  520,  86. 
Nectansmere,  a.d.  683,  368. 

Otford,  a.d.  775,  406. 

Wanborough,  a.d.  591,  201. 
Wanborough,  a.d.  715,  381. 

Wibba’s  dun,  or  Wimbledon,  a.d. 
568,  1 13. 

Winwaed,  the,  a.d.  655,  292. 
Wipped’s-fleet,  a.d.  439,  37. 

Bedford,  battle  of,  119. 

Benedict,  31 1  ;  his  church  at  Wear- 
mouth,  362. 

Bensington,  Offa  defeats  the  West 
Saxons  at,  406. 

Beorhtric,  succeeds  Cynewulf  as  king 
of  the  West  Saxons,  409  ;  marries 
Eadburh,  daughter  of  Offa,  409. 
Beornwulf  of  Mercia  attacks  Ecgberht 
and  is  defeated,  422. 

“Beowulf,”  155,  note;  the  song  of, 
*57-  . 

Berkshire  (“  Bearrocshire  ”),  probable 
origin  of  the  name,  93. 


Bernicians,  their  settlement,  70 ;  su¬ 
preme  in  the  North  under  Oswald. 
268. 

Bignor,  villa  at,  showing  traces  of  Ro¬ 
man  life,  43. 

Birinus  converts  King  Cynegils  and 
Wessex  to  Christianity,  284,  344. 

Bisi,  Bishop  of  East  Anglia,  322. 

Boadicea,  massacre  of  merchants  dur- 

l _ ing  the  rising  under,  100. _ 

Boniface,  his  mission  supported  by  the 
Frankish  king,  401,  and  note. 

Bosa,  as  Bishop  of  the  Deirans,  364. 

Botulf,  founder  of  Botulf’s  town,  or 
Boston,  341. 

Bradford,  battle  at,  329. 

Brancaster,  a  fortress  against  the  Sax¬ 
ons,  20  ;  ruins  of,  49. 

Britain,  and  the  Roman  conquest,  1, 
and  note  ;  organization  of,  under  the 
Antonines,  2  ;  mines  as  a  founda¬ 
tion  of  prosperity,  3  ;  imperfect  civ¬ 
ilization,  5  ;  Christianity  in,  6  ;  as  a 
military  depot  of  the  Roman  em¬ 
pire,  7  ;  physical  state  of,  7  ;  culti¬ 
vation  of,  under  the  Romans,  10; 
extent  of  fens  and  forests,  1 1  ;  the 
several  settlements  of  the  conquer¬ 
ors,  149. 

Britain,  Mid-,  absence  of  record  of 
conquest,  71,  72. 

Britons,  quarrel  with  the  Jutes,  32; 
Hengest  attacks  the,  a.d.  453,  32  ; 
defeated  by  Jutes  at  Wipped’s-fleet, 
37  ;  retreat  of,  to  the  Andredsweald, 
40  ;  defeat  of,  at  Southampton  Wa¬ 
ter,  by  the  West  Saxons,  a.d.  508, 
84  ;  evidence  of,  in  language,  ruins, 
and  religion,  134-140  ;  their  influ¬ 
ence  on  the  Engles,  140  ;  under  Ine, 
193  ;  their  resistance  aided  by  nat¬ 
ural  defence  of  the  forests,  219; 
causes  of  disorganization,  219. 

Brocmael,  his  victory  over  Ceawlin  at 
Faddilev,  200  ;  defeat  at  Chester  by 
4Ethelfrith,  235. 

Burford,  battle  of,  384. 

Burgh  Castle,  as  a  fortress,  20. 


Cadwallon,  joins  Penda  in  his  at¬ 
tack  on  Eadwine,  261  ;  defeat  and 
death  at  the  battle  of  Heaven-field, 
268. 

Caedmon,  357  ;  the  story  of  his  Song, 
358- 

Caerleon  as  a  Roman  station,  4,  7. 


INDEX. 


Caint  (Kent),  9;  the  home  of  the  Jutes, 
38. 

Calleva  Atrebaturn  (Silchester),  capt¬ 
ure  of,  by  the  West  Saxons,  112. 

Camboritum  (  now  Cambridge  ),  en¬ 
tire  destruction  of,  by  the  Gyrwas, 
79- 

Campodunum,  249,  and  note. 

Camulodunum,  the  oldest  Roman  set¬ 
tlement,  45. 

Canterbury  (  Durovernum  ),  3  ;  as  a 
fortress,  21,  32  ;  the  home  of  Aith- 
elberht,  205,  206  ;  Augustine  enters, 
a.d.  597,  213. 

Cant-wara-byryg ;  see  Canterbury. 

Castrum- Legionum  ;  see  Chester. 

Ceadda,  304  ;  liishop  of  Mercia,  322. 

Ceadvvalla,  king  of  the  West  Saxons, 
a.d.  685,  374  ;  failure  of  his  attack 
on  Kent,  374. 

Cearl,  king  of  the  Mercians,  241. 

Ceawlin,  his  victory  at  Deorham  over 
the  Three  Towns,  124;  effect  of  his 
conquests  on  tribal  relations,  195  ; 
in  the  Severn  valley,  198  ;  destruc¬ 
tion  of  Uriconium,  198;  Penge- 
wyrn  burned,  200  ;  defeat  at  Faddi- 
ley,  200;  defeated  at  Wanborough 
by  Ceol,  a.d.  591,  201. 

Cedd,  his  mission  among  the  Middle 
English,  291. 

Cenwealh,  king  of  Wessex,  2S7  ;  de¬ 
feated  by  Wulfhere,  a.d.  661,  318; 
and  Bishop  W ini,  322;  success  at 
Bradford  and  at  Pens,  329. 

<  Ceol  or  Ceolric,  as  king  of  the  Hwic- 
cas,  201  ;  his  defeat  of  Ceawlin  at 
Wanborough,  201. 

Ceolred,  king  of  Mercia,  attacks  Ine 
at  Wanborough,  381  :  death,  a.d. 
718,  382. 

Ceolwulf,  A.D.  597,  202  ;  struggles  with 
the  South  Saxons,  a.d.  607,  231  ; 
death,  a.d.  61  i,  238,  392. 

Ceorl,  the,  or  freeman,  173. 

Cerdic,  at  the  mouth  of  the  Itchen, 
and  his  attack  on  Porchester,  84 ; 
conquest  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  87. 

Charford,  battle  of,  85. 

Charles  the  Great,  his  relations  with 
England,  41 1  ;  Ecgberht  at  the  court 
of,  414. 

Chester,  as  a  Roman  station,  4,  7 ; 
capture  of,  by  .TEthelfrith,  235. 

Christianity,  the  triumph  of,  301. 

Cirencester,  as  a  Roman  station,  4; 
battle  of,  259,  260. 

Cissa,  son  of  ^Elle,  40. 


427 

Claudius,  his  part  in  the  conquest  ol 
Britain,  1. 

Coenred  succeeds  TEthelred  as  king 
of  the  Mercians,  376. 

Colchester,  a  Roman  site,  4;  its  im¬ 
portance  as  a  military  station,  7  ;  as 
a  fortress,  20. 

Coldingham,  Ebba’s  monastery  at,  351. 

Colman,  Bishop,  Finan’s  successor, 
312. 

Colum,  or  Columba,  lands  in  the  Isle 
of  Hii,  a.d.  563,  224  ;  founds  a  re¬ 
ligious  centre,  224  ;  legend  of,  225  ; 
his  mission-station  at  Hii,  2St. 

Condidan,  or  Kyndylan,  124. 

Comnael,  one  of  the  kings  of  the  Three 
Towns,  124. 

Constantine,  6;  crosses  to  Gaul,  a.d. 
407,  23  ;  expulsion  of  his  officers 
from  Britain,  23  ;  born  at  York,  60  ; 
as  ruler  in  the  southwest,  223. 

Corinium  (Cirencester),  its  position 
among  the  important  towns,  123. 

Crayford,  battle  of,  and  victory  of 
Hengest,  36. 

Crida,  first  king  of  the  Mercians,  258. 

Crowland,  the  abbey  of,  343. 

Cunetio,  capture  of,  by  Cynric,  91. 

Cutha,  slain  at  Faddiley,  201. 

Cuthbert,  2S9  ;  early  life,  304  ;  joins 
the  monks  of  Lindisfarne,  305  ; 
traits  of  character,  307,  30S ;  at 
Carlisle,  367. 

Cuthwulf,  his  victory  at  Bedford,  119, 
120. 

Cwichelm,  through  Eumer,  attempts 
the  assassination  of  Eadwine,  251. 

Cymen,  son  of  yElle,  40. 

Cymen’s  Ora,  or  Keynor,  the  landing- 
place  of  the  Saxons,  40. 

Cynegils,  succeeds  Ceowulf,  a.d.  61  i, 
231  ;  defeats  the  Welsh  at  Bamp- 
ton,  a.d.  614,  231. 

Cynewulf,  361  ;  death,  A.D.  821,  421. 

Cynric,  with  Cerdic,  attacks  Porches¬ 
ter  in  501,  84  ;  as  king  of  the  West 
Saxons,  88  ;  his  advance  westward, 
a.d.  552,  88 ;  capture  of  Sorbiodu- 
num,  89 ;  his  advance  after  the  fall 
of  Sorbiodunum,  90  ;  capture  of  Cu¬ 
netio,  91. 

D 

Doegsastan,  battle  of,  and  defeat  of  .e 
Scots  under  Aedhan,  225. 

Dalriada,  kingdom  of,  founded  by  the 
Scots,  224. 

Deirans,  a  title  of  the  Engle  dv/  Jlers 


INDEX. 


428 

bv  the  Derwent,  58 ;  the  East  Rid¬ 
ing  of  Yorkshire  probably  repre¬ 
sents  the  extent  of  their  first  settle¬ 
ment,  58  ;  capture  of  Eboracum  by, 
60. 

Deorham,  battle  of,  124. 

“  Deor’s  Complaint,”  156,  note. 

Deusdedit,  Archbishop,  death,  a.d. 
664,  316. 

Deva ;  see  Chester. 

Devil’s  Dyke,  the,  as  a  work  of  de¬ 
fence,  51. 

Diana,  temple  to,  tradition  of,  on  the 
site  of  the  church  of  St.  Paul,  102. 

Durobrivte,  the  centre  of  a  pottery- 
district,  77,  78,  note ;  conquest  of, 
by  the  North  Gyrwas,  78. 

Durolipons,  near  the  present  Hunt¬ 
ingdon,  the  scene  of  the  Gyrwas’ 
conquests,  79. 

Durovernum  (  Canterbury ),  3  ;  de¬ 
stroyed  by  Hengest,  33 ;  its  mili¬ 
tary  importance,  52. 

E 

Eadbald,  son  of  /Ethelberht,  turns 
from  Christianity,  and  again  ac¬ 
cepts  it,  239. 

Eadberht,  son  of  Eata,  king  of  North¬ 
umbria,  a.d.  738,  393  ;  attacked  by 
Althelbald,  393  ;  successful  attack 
on  the  Piets,  A.D.  740,  393  ;  defeat 
of  by  the  Piets,  396. 

Eadfrid,  second  son  of  Eadwine,  mur¬ 
dered  by  Penda,  283. 

Eadhed  as  bishop  of  the  Lindiswara, 

364- 

Eadwine,  son  of  ALlla,  240  ;  sheltered 
by  Cearl,  king  of  the  Mercians,  241  ; 
marries  Quaenburg,  daughter  of  Ce¬ 
arl,  241  ;  at  the  court  of  Raedwald, 
241  ;  .dEthelfrith  plots  for  his  death, 
241;  king  of  Northumbria,  246; 
conquest  of  Elmet,  249 ;  extent  of 
his  kingdom,  250 ;  marries  .-Ethel- 
burh,  daughter  of  Eadbald,  251  ;  at¬ 
tempted  assassination  of,  251  ;  vic¬ 
tory  of  the  West  Saxons,  251  ;  over- 
lord  of  all  English  kingdoms,  save 
Kent,  252  ;  York  his  capital,  254  ; 
accepts  Christianity,  256;  places 
Sigeberht  over  the  East  Anglians, 
261  ;  defeat  and  death  at  the  battle 
of  Hatfield,  263. 

“  Eadwine’s  burh  ”  (  Edinburgh  ),  a 
northern  border  post,  246. 

Ealdhelm,  kinship,  326 ;  his  work,  330. 


Eanfled,  sends  Wilfrid  to  Rome,  311. 

Eanfrith,  son  of  *4ithelfrith,  king  of 
the  Bernicians,  264 ;  murder  of, 
265,  266. 

Earconberht,  king  of  Kent,  311. 

Eardwulf,  restored  to  the  Northum¬ 
brian  throne,  a.d.  808,  419. 

East  Anglians,  defeat  of,  by  Penda, 
265. 

East  Goths  in  Italy,  22. 

East  Saxons,  see  Saxons. 

Eata,  as  bishop  of  the  Bernicians,  364. 

Ebba,  establishes  a  monastery  at  Col- 
dingham,  351  ;  her  descent,  352. 

Ebbsfleet,  landing  of  the  Jutes  at,  a.d. 
449,  27,  and  note ;  landing  of  Au¬ 
gustine  at,  214. 

Eboracum  (York),  a  Roman  camp  and 
capital  of  Britain,  59  ;  under  Caesar 
Constantius  an  imperial  city,  60 ; 
the  birthplace  of  Constantine,  60  ; 
its  grandeur  and  strength,  60 ;  de¬ 
struction  of,  61. 

Ecgberht,  descendant  of  Ceawlin,  de¬ 
feat  of  by  Beorhtric,  409 ;  at  the 
court  of  Charles  the  Great,  415; 
king  of  the  West  Saxons,  a.d.  802, 
418;  conquest  of  Cornwall,  420; 
victory  over  Beornwulf  at  Ellandun, 
422  ;  conquest  ofMercia  and  North¬ 
umbria,  422,  423  ;  as  king  of  Eng¬ 
land,  423. 

Ecgberht,  son  of  Eata,  Archbishop  of 
York,  a.d.  735,  392;  his  library, 
395- 

Ecgfrith,  king  of  Northumbria,  A.D. 
670,  347;  victories  over  the  Brit¬ 
ons,  347  ;  defeats  the  Scots  and 
Piets,  349  ;  his  defeat  of  Wulfhere, 
350  ;  troubles  with  the  Piets,  367  ; 
defeat  and  death  at  Nectansmere, 
368. 

Ecgwine,  Bishop,  and  his  preaching, 
340  ;  legend  of,  340,  341. 

Eddi,  and  prose  literature  of  the 
North,  326. 

Ellandun,  victory  of  Ecgberht  and  de¬ 
feat  of  Beornwulf  at,  422. 

Elmet,  kingdom  of,  probable  extent, 
246  ;  conquest  of  by  Eadwine,  249. 

Ely,  341,  and  note. 

Engle,  the,  or  Englishmen,  their  home¬ 
land,  48  ;  absence  of  chronicle  re¬ 
lating  to,  48  ;  probably  assisted  in 
the  work  of  conquest  by  the  Sax¬ 
ons,  50 ;  their  northward  advance, 
53  ;  the  conquest  of  Lindsey,  54 ; 
advance  towards  the  Trent,  56 ;  an- 


INDEX. 


429 


other  tribe  lands  at  the  mouth  of 
the  Humber,  56 ;  in  vale  of  the 
Derwent  as  “  Deirans,”  58;  their 
god-temple  at  Goodmanham,  58 ; 
settlement  in  “Cliffland,”  or  Cleve¬ 
land,  63;  in  Mid-Britain,  71,  72; 
their  settlement  at  Northampton, 
79  ;  importance  of  the  western  ad¬ 
vance,  81  ;  social  life  after  the  con¬ 
quest,  148 ;  military  and  civil  or¬ 
ganization,  167-171. 

“English  Chronicle,”  the,  as  the  au¬ 
thority  of  the  English  conquest,  27, 
note ;  Henry  of  Huntingdon’s  addi¬ 
tions  to,  40,  note. 

English  Literature,  the  Canterbury 
school  under  Theodore  and  Hadri¬ 
an,  324  ;  /Eddi  and  Northern  prose, 
326  ;  Ealdhelm,  326  ;  Caedmon,  356  ; 
growth  under  Aldfrith,  386  ;  Basda, 
386  ;  the  library  of  Ecgberht,  394. 

Eorl,  the,  or  Aitheling,  173. 

Eorpwald,  son  of  Raedwald,  succeeds 
his  father,  250;  conversion  of,  257  ; 
death,  257. 

Eosterwini,  355. 

Erconwald,  his  religious  foundations 
at  Chertsey  and  Barking,  344. 

Ermine  Street,  of  later  than  Roman 
date,  47  ;  course  of,  55. 

Eumer,  a  West-Saxon  envoy,  attempts 
the  life  of  Eadwine,  250. 

Evesham,  legend  of,  341,  and  note. 

F 

Faddiley,  battle  of,  and  defeat  of  Ce- 
awlin,  199. 

Farinmael,  one  of  the  kings  of  the 
Three  Towns,  124. 

Fenlands,  extent  of,  10,  11. 

Finan,  Bishop,  Aidan’s  successor,  290, 

311- 

Forests,  extent  of,  1 1  ;  as  natural  de¬ 
fences,  219. 

Fortresses  of  the  “  Saxon  Shore,”  20, 

21  ;  garrison  and  power  of  the 
troops,  21. 

“Four  Towns,”  the,  Cuthwulf’s  vic¬ 
tory  over,  1 19. 

Franks,  the,  their  colonization  of  Gaul, 

22  :  extent  of  their  conquests,  399  ; 
friendly  relations  with  the  English, 
399- 

Frideswide,  St.,  legend  of,  343. 

Frisian  Sea,  the  early  name  of  Filth 
of  Forth,  68. 

Frisians,  40,  and  7iote ;  settlers  in  the 
Tweed  valley,  68. 


G 

Garianonum,  ruins  of,  49. 

Gaul,  conquered  by  the  Franks,  22. 

Geraint,  King,  victory  of  Ine  over, 
376. 

Gewissas,  the,  a  tribe  of  West  Saxons, 
84  ;  advance  on  Winchester,  84,  85  ; 
defeat  at  Mount  Badon,  or  Badburv, 
86;  their  route  from  Sorbiodunum, 
89  ;  their  settlements  and  local  ti¬ 
tles,  89 ;  and  the  “  White  Horse,”  92. 

Gildas,  24,  25,  note. 

Glastonbury,  and  its  legend,  379. 

Glevum  (Gloucester),  advantages  of 
its  position,  123. 

Gregory,  and  English  slaves,  210  ;  his 
mission  under  Augustine,  212,  213  ; 
plan  of  ecclesiastical  organization, 
216;  death,  a.d.  606,  229. 

Guest’s,  Dr.,  “  Early  English  settle¬ 
ment  in  South  Britain,”  31,  32,  note  ; 
35,  note. 

Guthlac,  at  Crowland,  342;  his  life, 
342  ;  building  of  Crowland  Abbey, 
343- 

“  Gwent,”  a  clearing,  9. 

Gwenta  of  the  Iceni,  now  Norwich,  9, 
49. 

“  Gwentceaster  ”  (Winchester),  9. 

Gwynedd,  King  of,  protects  the  sons 
of  TElla,  232. 

Gyrwas,  the,  or  Fen  -  folk,  77 ;  in 
Northamptonshire,  79. 

Gyrwas,  the  South,  as  conquerors  of 
Durolipons,  79. 

Gyrwas,  the  North,  as  conquerors  of 
Durobrivte,  79. 

H 

Hadrian,  2,  note  ;  5,  note ;  his  defence 
against  the  Piets,  14 ;  rejects  the 

'  see  of  Canterbury,  316;  and  Theo¬ 
dore,  324. 

Hampton,  the  “  home-town,”  after¬ 
wards  Northampton,  settlement  of 
the  Engles  at,  80. 

Hatfield,  battle  of,  263. 

Heaven-field,  battle  of,  268. 

Hengest,  the  landing  of,  the  beginning 
of  English  history,  27  ;  burns  Duro- 
vernum,  32;  march  of,  32  ;  his  first 
attack  on  the  Britons,  a.d.  455,  52. 

Ilereric,  son  of  .Ella,  poisoned,  a.d. 
615,  240. 

Hertford,  Council  of,  under  Theodore, 
323  ;  after-influence,  324. 

Hild,  abbess,  313,  356;  her  descent, 

357- 


43° 


INDEX. 


Hodgkins,  “Italy  and  her  Invaders,” 
1 8,  note. 

Honorius,  the  emperor,  success  of 
Stilicho  under,  22. 

Horsa,  death  of,  at  the  battle  of  Ayles- 
ford,  35. 

Hoi  sted,  the  probable  grave  of  Horsa, 


Hiibner’s  “  Inscriptions  Britanniae 
Latinre,”  5. 

Huntingdon,  Henry  of,  his  additions 
to  the  “  English  Chronicle,”  40,  note. 

Hwiccas,  settlement  of,  in  Gloucester¬ 
shire  and  Worcestershire,  125  ;  ris¬ 
ing  of,  under  Ceol,  200,  201. 

I 

Icknield  Way,  course  of  the,  117. 

Ida,  “  the  Flame-bearer,”  69  ;  Barn- 
borough  his  base  of  operations,  69  ; 
his  struggles  against  the  Welsh,  70. 

Idle,  battle  of  the,  243,  244. 

Ine,  the  Britons  under,  193  ;  submis¬ 
sion  of  Kent  and  London  to,  375  ; 
his  defeat  of  Geraint,  376,  377  ;  vic¬ 
tory  over  Ceolred,  A.D.  715,  381  ; 
pilgrimage  and  death,  382. 

Ireland,  its  physical  character,  269; 
early  institutions,  271,  272  ;  story 
of  St.  Patrick,  274  ;  conversion  of, 
275  ;  the  Church,  and  social  condi¬ 
tion  of,  276. 

Isurium,  62,  and  note. 

J 

James,  a  Roman  priest  of  Deira,  310. 

Justus,  bishop  of  Rochester,  a.d.  604, 
227  ;  leaves  Britain,  240. 

Jutes,  the,  date  of  their  landing,  26, 
note :  land  at  Ebbsfleet  under  Hen- 
gest  and  Horsa,  a.d.  449,  27  ;  their 
settlement  in  Thanet,  31  ;  firs-t  dis¬ 
putes  with  the  Britons,  32;  their 
march,  32, 33;  their  victory  at  Ayles- 
ford,  34;  victory  at  Crayford,  36; 
at  Wippeds-fleet,  37  ;  the  termina¬ 
tion  of  their  conquests  with  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  87;  their  advance  on 
London,  103  ;  their  advance  west¬ 
ward,  A.D.  568,  109 ;  their  defeat 
under  Aithelberht  at  Wibba’s  dun, 
1 13  ;  effect  of  their  conquest  on 
.  Kent,  146 ;  Kent  and  the  Isle  of 
Wight  their  provinces,  149. 

K 

Kent  (Caint),  9 ;  its  political  power 


and  prosperity  under  Althelberht, 
107  ;  importance  under  /Ethelberht, 
206 ;  decline  of  its  political  power, 
240. 

King,  the  Saxon,  a  representative  of 
national  life,  172. 

King’s  Scaur,  cave  in,  and  traces  of  its 
inhabitants,  64. 

Kingston,  existence  of  Roman  station 
at,  1 13,  note. 

Kit’s  Coty-House,  a  cromlech,  34. 

Kyndylan,  elegy  on,  198,  note. 

L 

Leicester  as  a  municipal  centre,  4. 

Leutherius,  322. 

Lewis  the  Gentle,  successor  of  Charles 
the  Great,  419. 

Lichfield  (“the  field  of  the  dead”), 
a  traditional  mark  of  Engle  con¬ 
quest,  81  ;  bishopric  of,  created  by 
Offa,  409. 

Lilia,  a  thegn,  saves  the  life  of  Ead- 
wine,  251. 

Lindiswara,  the  settlement  of,  56 ; 
their  southern  movement,  73. 

Lindum,  a  Roman  station,  4. 

Literature  ;  see  English  Literature. 

Literature,  Saxon,  156;  “  Deor’s  Com¬ 
plaint,”  156,  note;  “Song  of  Beo¬ 
wulf,”  157. 

Liudhard,  Bishop,  213. 

Loidis  (Leeds),  site  of,  247. 

London,  its  early  position  among 
towns,  7  ;  as  a  fortress,  21  ;  its  mil¬ 
itary  importance  lost  in  commercial 
greatness,  95  ;  early  physical  char¬ 
acter  of  its  neighborhood,  95-99  ; 
growth  of,  under  the  Romans,  99 ; 
its  advantages  as  a  centre,  100 ;  its 
probable  extent  under  the  Romans, 
101  ;  the  Roman  embankments,  and 
growth,  101,  102 ;  its  importance 
among  towns,  103  ;  the  attack  of 
East  Saxons  and  Jutes  on,  104;  the 
fall  of,  105,  106,  and  note. 

Lubbock’s  “Prehistoric  Times,”  16, 
note. 

Lymne,  as  a  fortress,  21  ;  fall  of,  38. 

M 

Maelgwn,  prince  of  North  Wales,  223. 

Maidulf  and  Ealdhelm,  326. 

Maps,  list  of,  xxi. 

Martel,  Charles,  401,  and  note. 

Maryport,  traces  of  Pictish  raids  at,  67. 

Maserfield,  battle  of,  286. 

Mearcredsburn,  battle  of,  41,  note. 


INDEX. 


431 


Medeshamstead,  foundation  of  the  ab¬ 
bey  of,  341. 

Mellitus,  Bishop,  mission  to  the  East 
Saxons,  228  ;  quits  Britain,  239. 

Mercia,  after  the  battle  of  the  Win- 
vvaed,  294;  under  Wulfhere,  296; 
condition  of  in  669,  318. 

Mercians,  the,  or  Men  of  the  March, 
a  title  of  the  West  Engles,  82  ;  rise 
of,  under  Benda,  257  ;  kings  of,  258, 
note  ;  revolt  in  659,  296. 

Merewald,  brother  of  Wulfhere,  un- 
der-king  of  the  valley  of  the  Wye, 
318. 

Monasteries  and  monastic  life,  under 
zEthelred,  334  ;  under  Ecgfrith,  350. 

Mount  Badon,  battle  at,  86. 

Mul,  brother  of  Ceadwalla,  death  of, 


374,  375- 

Myned  Agned,  the  site  of  Edinburgh, 
69. 

N 


Nectansmere,  defeat  of  Ecgfrith  at, 
368. 

Needwood  forest,  extent  of,  72. 

Northamptonshire,  physical  character 
of,  81. 

Norwich,  a  Roman  site,  4  ;  the  Given- 
ta  of  the  Iceni,9;  a  centre  of  settle¬ 
ment  of  the  North-folk,  50. 

“  Notitia  Imperii,”  20,  note ;  21,  note. 


O 

Offa,  king  of  Mercia,  a.d.  758,  405  ; 
his  victory  at  Otford  restores  the 
Mercian  realm,  a.d.  775,  406 ;  at¬ 
tack  on  the  West  Saxons,  a.d.  779, 
406  ;  defeats  the  king  of  Powys,  407  ; 
creates  the  Archbishopric  of  Lich¬ 
field,  409;  and  Charles  the  Great, 
41 1  ;  seizes  East  Anglia,  415,  416. 

Oitlilwald,  son  of  Oswald,  an  under¬ 
king  of  part  of  Deira,  292  ;  at  the 
battle  of  the  Winwaed,  292. 

Osric  succeeds  Eadwine  as  king  of 
Deira,  264,  265  ;  return  of  heathen¬ 
ism  under,  264  ;  death,  265. 

Osulf  succeeds  Eadberht,  396. 

Oswald,  second  son  of  /Ethelfrith,  suc¬ 
ceeds  Eanfrith,  266 ;  his  victory  over 
Cadwallon,  266 ;  defeat  and  death 
at  Maserfeld,  286. 

Osvvini,  son  of  Osric,  287  ;  king  of 
Deira,  288  ;  death,  289. 

Oswiu,  third  son  of  yEthelfrith,  king 
of  Bernicia,  287  ;  marries  Eanfled, 
288  ;  his  defeat  of  Benda  at  the  bat¬ 
tle  of  the  Winwaed,  293;  overlord 


of  East  Anglia,  294;  over  all  the 
English,  295  ;  religious  difficulties, 
309 ;  founds  a  religious  house  at 
Streonashalh,  313  ;  at  the  synod  of 
Whitby,  a.d.  664,  313. 

Otford,  victory  of  Offa  at,  406. 

Othona,  a  fortress,  20. 

Owini,  355. 

P 

Paulinus,  chaplain  to  ^Ethelburh, 
made  Bishop  of  York,  255. 

Peada,  son  of  Penda,  under-king  of 
the  Middle  English,  290;  marries 
Alchfleda,  daughter  of  Oswiu,  290  ; 
embraces  Christianity,  290. 

Pec-saetan,  the,  their  settlement  in 
Derbyshire,  81. 

Penda,  king  of  the  Mercians,  a.d.  626, 
258  ;  attacks  the  West  Saxons,  a.d. 
628,  259  ;  alliance  with  Cadwallon, 
262  ;  victory  over  Eadwine,  264 ; 
victory  over  the  East  Anglians,  265  ; 
his  overlordship,  265  ;  victory  over 
Oswald  at  Maserfield,  286  ;  attack 
on  Bamborough,  287  ;  defeat  at  the 
battle  of  Winwaed,  293  ;  death,  294. 

Pengwyrn,  the  site  of  Shrewsbury, 
199  ;  burned  by  Ceawlin,  200. 

Piets,  the,  their  struggle  against  the 
Emperor  Hadrian,  14;  assisted  by 
disaffection  in  the  Roman  province, 
15  ;  defeated  by  Theodosius,  15  ;  de¬ 
feated  by  Stilicho,  22  ;  24,  25,  note  ; 
traces  of  their  raids  at  Maryport, 
67  ;  rising  of,  against  Ecgfrid,  366  ; 
defeat  Eadberht,  396. 

Pippin,  King,  sends  envoys  to  North¬ 
umbria,  393  ;  and  the  English  mis¬ 
sion,  401. 

Pippin,  the  Short,  king  of  the  Franks, 
a.d.  751,  404. 

Porchester,  a  Roman  fort,  21. 

Ptolemy,  geographical  survey  of,  4, 
note. 

Putta,  under- bishop,  at  Rochester, 
323- 

Q 

Quaenburg,  wife  of  Eadwine,  241. 

R 

Rsedvvald,  king  of  the  East  Angli¬ 
ans,  207  ;  accepts  Christianity,  229  ; 
Mid -Britain  under,  231;  shelters 
Eadwine,  241  ;  victory  over  yEthel¬ 
frith  at  the  battle  of  the  Idle,  250; 
death,  a.d.  617,  250. 

Ratae  (modern  Leicester),  its  impor- 


432 


INDEX. 


tance  in  Mid-Britain,  76;  Roman 
remains  at,  76. 

Readings,  the,  their  settlement,  and 
preservation  of  name  in  the  present 
town,  93. 

Reculver  fort,  21. 

Regnlbium  (Reculver),  147. 

Richborough,  port  of,  3  ;  as  a  fort,  21  ; 
its  importance  as  a  check  against 
the  Jutes,  36. 

Ricula,  sister  of  zEthelberht,  207. 

Rochester  as  a  fortress,  21. 

Rockingham  forest,  extent  of,  73  ;  81, 
note. 

Roman  Church,  the  thoroughness  of 
its  organization,  302  ;  causes  of  sep¬ 
aration  from  the  Irish  Church,  308, 
309  ;  England  one  under,  315. 

Roman  inscriptions,  absence  of,  in 
Devon,  Cornwall,  and  Wales,  5. 

Roman  villa  at  Bignor,  43  ;  traces  at 
Aldborough,  62  ;  remains  at  Leices¬ 
ter,  76  ;  remains  at  Ancaster,  77. 

Roman  Wall,  the,  traces  of  military 
life  in,  66. 

Romans,  the  government  of  towns  un¬ 
der,  12  ;  extent  of  their  influence  on 
the  provincials,  13  ;  evils  of  their 
government,  14;  their  difficulties 
with  Saxon  pirates,  20;  their  forts, 
21  ;  strength,  discipline,  and  with¬ 
drawal  of  troops,  21  ;  marked  influ¬ 
ence  of,  on  the  Engle,  142,  143  ; 
evils  of  rule,  147  ;  traces  of  cult¬ 
ure,  154. 

S 

Saeberct,  as  under -king  of  the  East 
Saxons,  227  ;  death,  A.D.  616,  238. 

“  Saxon  Shore,”  the,  formation  and 
extent,  19,  20 ;  Count  of,  19 ;  20, 
note ;  fortresses  of,  20,  24,  note ; 
complete  conquest  of,  52. 

Saxons,  the,  their  homeland,  15  ;  war- 
keels  of,  16  ;  description  of,  by  Sido- 
nius  Apollinaris,  16;  off  Gaul,  a.d. 
287,  15,  16,  note ;  as  slave-hunters, 
18  ;  their  cruelty  and  sacrifices,  18  ; 
attack  Britain,  a.d.  364,  18;  effect 
of  their  piracy  on  commerce,  19; 
Roman  precautions  against,  19  ;  de¬ 
feated  by  Stilicho,  22  ;  landing  of, 
in  447,  40  ;  in  the  North-Thames 
district,  44  ;  social  life  and  arts,  155  ; 
literature,  156;  religion  and  legends, 
159-161  ;  as  seamen  and  warriors, 
164-166;  township,  the,  social  life 
of,  175  ;  defence  of  towns,  176;  the 
common  pasture  -  land,  176;  dis¬ 


tinctive  boundary  names,  177;  the 
freeman,  his  costume  and  home-life, 
179,  180;  the  position  of  women, 
and  their  work,  180;  the  common 
bond  in  peace  and  war,  182  ;  the 
offences  of  the  wrong -doer  shared 
by  his  kin,  183;  the  “blood-wite,” 
183  ;  the  freeman  a  freeholder,  184  ; 
the  division  of  the  plough-land,  184  ; 
the  last  and  his  position,  185;  the 
serf,  his  position  due  to  crime  or 
poverty,  186;  their  descendants 
born  slaves,  186;  the  Tun-Moot, 
its  laws  and  power,  187. 

Saxons,  East,  landing  of,  44  ;  barriers 
to  their  inland  advance,  47 ;  attack 
London,  103  ;  Sledda,  king  of,  227  ; 
Saeberct,  as  under-king,  227  ;  mis¬ 
sion  of  Bishop  Mellitus  to,  228. 

Saxons,  Middle,  as  settlers  west  of 
London,  106. 

Saxons,  West,  victory  over  the  Brit¬ 
ons,  a.d.  508,  84 ;  their  after-inac¬ 
tion  and  its  causes,  88;  conquest 
of  Berkshire,  93  ;  advance  on  the 
district  about  Windsor,  94;  their 
capture  of  Calleva  Atrebatum,  112; 
their  advance  to  the  district  of  the 
Four  Towns,  117;  victory  at  Bed¬ 
ford  under  Cuthwulf,  1 1 9 ;  victory 
of  Deorham  under  Ceawlin,  124 ; 
leagued  with  the  Welsh,  192;  as 
conquerors  of  Somerset,  192  (see 
Gewissas). 

“  Scots,”  the,  troubles  of  the  western 
coast  from,  24  ;  from  north  Ireland 
found  the  kingdom  of  Dalriada,  224  ; 
defeated  by  zEthelfrith  at  the  battle 
of  Daegsastan,  225. 

Servius,  the  emperor,  and  the  Welsh, 
5- 

Sherwood  forest,  its  extent,  72. 

Sidonius  Apollinaris,  his  account  of 
the  Saxons  and  their  piracy,  16,  and 
note. 

Sigeberht,  king  of  the  East  Anglians, 
a.d.  631,  261  ;  death,  a.d.  634,  266. 

Silchester  ;  see  Calleva  Atrebatum. 

Simon  of  Leicester,  341. 

Sledda,  king  of  the  East  Saxons,  227. 

Snotingas,  the,  their  place  of  settle¬ 
ment,  now  Nottingham,  75. 

Somerset,  the  West  Saxons  masters 
of,  193. 

Sorbiodunum  (Old  Sarum),  fortress  of, 
a  check  to  the  advance  of  the  West 
Saxons,  87  ;  capture  of  by  Cynric, 
88, 


INDEX. 


433 


Southampton  Water,  its  military  and 
commercial  importance,  83. 

Spain,  conquest  of,  by  West  Goths, 

22. 

St.  Albans,  a  Roman  site,  4. 

St.  Beino,  legend  of,  190,  191. 

St.  Patrick,  story  of,  274. 

Stilicho,  the  Roman  general,  his  suc¬ 
cesses  over  the  Piets  and  Saxons, 
22. 

Stonehenge,  called  “  Hanging  Stones” 
by  the  Gewissas,  a.d.  552,  89. 

Strathclyde,  small  states  united  as  the 
kingdom  of,  223. 

“  Stycas,”  copper  pieces  coined  in  the 
reign  of  Eadberht,  392. 

Sudbury,  a  centre  of  the  South-folk, 

S'- 

T 

Thames  Valley,  character  of,  95,  97. 

Thanet,  settlement  of  Jutes  in,  31. 

Thegns,  the,  as  the  king’s  body-guard, 
174;  their  bonds  of  allegiance,  177, 
178. 

Theodbald,  brother  of  /Ethelfrith, 
slain  at  the  battle  of  Daegsastan, 
226. 

Theodore,  as  Archbishop  of  Canter¬ 
bury,  lands  in  Kent,  a.d.  669,  317  ; 
his  aims  and  success,  319,  320  ;  the 
council  at  Hertford,  322  ;  with  Ha¬ 
drian,  founds  a  school  at  Canter¬ 
bury,  324,  325  ;  his  division  of  dio¬ 
ceses,  331-334  ;  his  work  in  Mercia, 
346,  347  ;  his  division  of  the  North¬ 
umbrian  dioceses,  363  ;  his  death, 
a.d.  690,  369. 

Theodosius,  his  defeat  of  the  Piets,  15. 

Towcester,  position  of  the  earlier 
town,  80. 

Trent  valley,  the,  physical  character 
of,  72  ;  the  Engle  attack  on,  73. 

Trumwine,  Bishop,  385. 

Tun-Moot,  the,  the  germ  of  modern 
government,  1S8. 

U 

Uriconium,  distinction  of,  by  Ceawlin, 
199  ;  its  importance  and  extent,  199. 

V 

Valentinian,  inroads  of  Piets  in  the 
reign  of,  1 5. 

Vandals,  the,  in  Africa,  22. 

Venta  (Winchester),  as  centre  of  a 
“  Gwent,”  4. 

Verulam,  importance  of,  as  a  military 
station,  7. 

28 


Verulamium  (St.  Albans),  its  impor¬ 
tance,  105;  martyrdom  of  Alban 
under  Diocletian,  105  ;  capture  and 
destruction  of,  105,  and  note. 

Vitalian,  Pope,  388. 

Vortigern,  defeat  of,  by  Aurelius  Am¬ 
brosian  us,  36. 

W 

Wanborough,  battle  of,  and  defeat  of 
Ceawlin,  201. 

Wantage,  the  birthplace  of  /Elfred, 
92. 

Wantsum,  the  channel  separating 
Thanet  from  the  mainland,  32,  ?iote. 

War-keels  of  the  Saxons,  r6. 

Watling  Street,  its  course  from  Stony- 
Stratford,  80 ;  towards  the  Severn, 
81. 

Wearingawick  (Warwick),  340. 

West  Goths,  the,  in  Spain,  22. 

Weyland  Smith's  home,  German  le¬ 
gend  of,  92. 

Whitby,  the  synod  of,  a.d.  664,  313  ; 
result  of,  315;  and  the  monastery 
of  Hild,  357. 

White  Horse  Vale,  tradition  connect¬ 
ed  with,  and  the  Gewissas,  92. 

Wibba’s  dun  (Wimbledon),  battle  of, 
"3- 

Wighard,  sent  to  Rome  for  consecra¬ 
tion,  317  ;  death,  317. 

Wightgara,  the,  Jute  settlers  in  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  87. 

Wiglaf,  king  of  East  Anglia,  defeated 
by  Ecgberht,  a.d.  82S,  422. 

Wilfrid,  visits  Rome,  312;  his  re¬ 
turn,  312;  appointed  abbot  by 
Alchfrid,  312;  at  the  Whitby  Syn- 
od,  313. 

Wilfrid,  Bishop,  and  Ecgfrith,  363; 
is  deposed,  and  appeals  to  Rome, 
364 ;  his  conversion  of  the  South 
Saxons,  365 ;  restored  to  York, 
368. 

Willibrord,  his  mission  among  the 
Franks,  401. 

Wil-saetan,  the  settlement  of  West 
Saxons  at,  90. 

Winchester  (Venta),  4  ;  “Gwentceas- 
ter,”  7. 

Winfrid,  Bishop,  removal  from  the 
diocese  of  Mercia,  a.d.  675,  333. 

Winfrith  ;  see  Boniface. 

Wini,  Bishop,  322. 

Winwsed,  battle  of.  292. 

Wipped’s-fleet,  defeat  of  the  Britons 
at,  A.D.  465,  37. 


434 


INDEX. 


Witenagemote,  the,  167. 

Wlencing,  son  of  /Elle,  40. 

Woden,  the  god,  traces  of  his  name, 
163 ;  decay  of  the  worship  of, 
301. 

Woodchester,  Roman  remains  at,  124. 

Wulfhere,  Mercia  under,  296;  de¬ 
feats  Cenvvealh,  318;  and  ^£thel- 
walch,  319;  defeat  of,  and  death, 
A.D.  675,  350. 


Y 

York,  as  capital  of  the  Roman  prov¬ 
ince,  7 ;  capital  of  Britain  under 
Eadwine,  254  ;  Paulinus  made  bish¬ 
op  of,  255  ;  as  a  religious  and  po¬ 
litical  centre,  394 ;  the  school  of, 
under  Ecgberht,  396 ;  see  also 
Eboracum. 

Z 

Zosimus,  23,  note. 


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